Family of western Pennsylvania World War II soldier reunited with his helmet 80 years later
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — It is a reunion 80 years in the making. During World War II, Earl L. McCorkle from Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, was fighting the Germans while trying to cross the Rhine River. But it was during the Battle at Remagen that he lost his helmet.
When Earl's daughters, Fern McCorkle, Regina McCorkle and Joyce McLay, got a letter on Veterans Day from the Swiss forensic pathologist Jean-Loup Gassend saying that he had traced a recently found GI's helmet back to their late father, they were understandably a little skeptical.
"This is crazy," Fern McCorkle recalled when she and her sisters initially got the letter. "This is ridiculous. This has to be a fluke."
But it wasn't a fluke. In 2018, their father's helmet was found in the mud of the Rhine River and how it got there is incredible.
In March of 1945, Earl McCorkle and the 291st Engineering Combat Battalion, along with thousands of U.S. soldiers, were in a full sprint to Berlin. Most bridges were destroyed by the retreating Germans on the Rhine River, but the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen remained intact. A fierce battle for the bridge and the vital crossing ensued.
Though the Ludendorff Bridge eventually collapsed, McCorkle's unit, under fire, built and maintained a pontoon bridge for American forces to roll across and eventually win the war.
And it was during that time that McCorkle lost his helmet in the Rhine, though he never mentioned it, at least not to his daughters.
Joyce McLay said her father didn't speak about the war.
"I think that it was a really terrible experience for everyone involved and I think he would just prefer not to relive it. I can't imagine what they went through. And I'm just very proud that he was one of the lucky ones that came home."
While it is not known exactly how their father's helmet got into the river, there was enough of McCorkle's initials and service number left on the inside of the helmet to trace it back to him, thus leading to a one-of-a-kind posthumous reunion on Friday morning in Pittsburgh.
"We all have been praying," said Regina McCorkle. "Asking him to give us a sign as to whether he wanted this to happen, even before it was sent over here. And I guess that's his answer. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this for us. We are very grateful."
The helmet will remain on permanent display at Pittsburgh's Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum. And though McCorkle passed away in 1985, he could hardly have imaged that 80 years after the war and 40 years after his death, his family and members of his community would be celebrating a small part of his legacy that was once lost, but now is found and certainly not forgotten.
