Sgt. Knott:
p. 47 · Read in the full issue
End of a 42 year quest
Leiut. Herman Knott, U.S. Air Force, was buried this year under a pin oak tree in the United States national cemetry at Farmingdale, New York, 42 years after his death in a B-17 bomber shot down by a Japan ese anti-aircraft gun on New Britain during World War 11. He now lies a few yards from the grave of his parents (a First World War soldier), following decades of restless mourning by the Knott family, and unrelen ting effort by Jose Holguin,a retired U.S.A.F. colonel who was the navigator and sole survivor of the World War II mission which ended in a fiery crash on June 26, 1943, in the New Britain jungle.
Holguin, commander of the mission, returned twice to New Britain, depleting his $12,000 savings, to look for his lost men. ’Today should not be a day of sadness,” Holguin told the 25 mourners grouped around the new grave sliced into the lush green of the cemetery. ”It should be a day of reflection and appreciation that one of our loved ones is now here, and we know where he is now.”
Holguin, now 64, assistant principal of a high school in Tujunga, California, has attended five funerals in all, Knott’s and those of four others lost in the crash. The Farming dale ceremony represents the end of a search that he vowed to undertake that night in the jungle. Injured and frightened of the capture (and two-year imprisonment by the Japanese) which lay ahead of him, Hol guin prayed for his nine dead crew members, but left the crash site without burying them. ”1 just knew I would be back some day to carry them home, ” he said.
Holguin went back to New Britain in 1982 and succeeded in finding the wreck of the bomber, its nickname, ’’Naugh ty, But Nice” still emblazoned on its nose. But there were no human remains. Again, in 1983, Holguin went to the island, continuing his un successful search.
Ironically, perhaps, he had been looking in the wrong place. His men were already on the way home. ”1 was about ready to give up,” he said, recalling his last fruitless visit to New Britain, ’’when the local authorities showed me records which showed that the bodies of some American fliers had been ex humed and removed to un
marked graves in Hawaii.” A military laboratory in Honolulu examined these remains and identified five of the men who had been in the crew of Hol guin’s B-17.
Apart from Knott, these were Sgt Pace Payne, of Texas, Sgt Robert Greibel, of Wyoming, Sgt Francis Peattie, of New York, and Sgt Henry Garcia, of Los Angeles. —New York Times News Service.