ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 24, 1997 TAG: 9702240017
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: A Cuppa Joe
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY
I walked through East Hill Cemetery in Salem the other morning, looking for the marker of George Hobart Pierpont.
He was the pilot of the American B-24J Liberator bomber lost in the mountains of China on Aug. 31, 1944, on a mission against the Japanese. Two Chinese peasants found the remains of the plane and crew in October.
Last month, a team of U.S. forensics experts and MIA-POW officials hiked to the top of the mountain, Mao'er Shan, or "Little Cat," to check the site and plan a more intensive dig in the spring.
News reports described a remote, forbidding place in an area known as Dragon's Tooth. Wreckage lay along a granite cliff with an 87-degree slope.
The 2.4-mile hike took three hours. On the way out, a reporter fell 200 feet, crashing through trees. She was knocked unconscious, but survived.
The forest was wet with melting snow and "basically, cold as hell," said Larry Greer, a press officer from the MIA office who made part of the hike.
The wreckage lay among head-high boulders with little room to stand. Three shallow probes brought up a single piece of human bone. Opinions vary as to the potential for finding more.
Most of what's left will stay
``The oldest man on that crew was younger than my son is,'' Greer told me. ``The youngest was 19. I think back to when I was 19 years old. By no means would I have focused on the kinds of things these young men were having to do.''
The 10 crewmen were members of the 14th Air Force. Their plane was new and technologically advanced. They were flying from Liuzhou to Formosa, now Taiwan, to bomb Takao Harbor. On their return, they were warned by radio that the base was under attack. They headed north in bad weather, looking for another base.
"This is an aircraft that just flew into the side of a mountain," Jay Liotta, head of the MIA team, told reporters after visiting the site. He said only bone fragments are likely to be recovered.
Machine guns, engine parts and other material lay on the mountainside.
"It will probably stay there," Greer said.
Chinese villagers already had retrieved some airplane parts, including a large piece of aluminum wing. Greer asked a farmer how they did it.
"Nine men, five days," the farmer said.
The artifacts might go in a village museum.
Personal effects - eyeglasses, pocket watches, coins from India and other items - were taken to the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii for examination. A more detailed investigation in China is planned for the spring.
Fate, unrest resolved
Hobart Pierpont was 25 when he died.
He had been "just a normal boy growing up," his sister, Nancy Mountcastle, said from her home in Maryland. "He had been a Boy Scout. He did very well in school."
He went off to the war before finishing at Virginia Tech, but was awarded a posthumous degree, she said.
China's help with the recovery, aimed at improving relations with the United States, has left her with mixed feelings. Sometimes the news has felt like a rehash.
But the reports have brought calls and letters from people she hadn't heard from in years. People who remembered her brother.
At East Hill Cemetery, Hobart Pierpont's small, rectangular stone rests next to his mother's grave.
The inscription says: "Spirit with God. Memory in Our Hearts. Resting Place Unknown."
Now his fate is known, but too late for his mother, who, Mountcastle said, "didn't really accept it very well."
What's your story? Call me at 981-3256, send e-mail to joek@roanoke.com or write to P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke 24010.
LENGTH: Medium: 77 linesby CNB