Remains of Merrill’s Marauder identified 80 years after death in Burma
By WYATT OLSON STARS AND STRIPES •
May 27, 2024
Army Pvt. 1st Class Luther Bagley holds his son Nathan Bagley while posing beside his wife Eleanor in this photo taken during World War II before he shipped out to Burma where he joined Merrill’s Marauders. (Jonnie Melillo Clasen)
On the morning of May 14, Nathan “Woody” Bagley received a call that left the 80-year-old speechless. The remains of his father, missing since 1944 when he was killed in Burma while serving in the famed Merrill’s Marauders, had been found and identified.
A member of the Army Casualty and Mortuary Affairs Operations Division at Fort Knox, Ky., told him that Luther E. “Buck” Bagley, who had died at age 22, had been identified through DNA testing. “When I got off the phone, I sat there for a few minutes and thought about it,” Nathan Bagley told Stars and Stripes by phone Friday from his home in Georgia. He then got up to tell his wife Pat in another room.
Read more at:
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2024-05-26/merrill-marauder-remains-identified-13988542.htmlSource - Stars and Stripes
