DENVER — After more than 70 years, a soldier who fought in the Korean War has finally returned home.
U.S. Army Private First Class Lawrence H. Williams disappeared while fighting in Korea in August 1951.
"I knew that my grandfather and my parents were both always in question of what happened to Lawrence," said Williams' nephew Steve Williams. "We had reports that he had drowned. They said that his three-man team was washing the Jeeps of the unit and after they were washing the Jeeps - it was 115 degrees out - they went for a swim to cool off... it swept him away and they saw him go down river, tried to recover him, and they never did."
Then, about three years ago, Steve Williams said the Army contacted his family, asking for DNA. In 2019, the military branch had dug up about 600 unidentified remains from the war to do DNA testing in an effort to finally identify those soldiers.
One of them was identified as Lawrence Williams.
"It really was quite sobering to think that he has been missing all these years and everybody really didn’t know what happened to him," Steve Williams said. "And so, we were quite surprised and quite happy."
His body had been found about 40-50 miles away from where he was last seen, according to Steve Williams. The Army was not able to identify him by his clothing, so he became one of hundreds of unidentified soldiers buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii.
Last month, 73 years late, Lawrence Williams was finally interred at home in Denver.
"I’m really quite honored to have this opportunity to have him interned in Fort Logan," Steve Williams said. "Yea it’s quite sobering to think that something that happened so many years ago and it makes you think back and remember the history of this country and what has affected the families of all these Americans."
More than 36,000 Americans were killed in the Korean War. Of those, 7,000 remain unaccounted for.
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