In 1984, Walter’s son Craig Wilkins honeymooned in Hawaii and visited the courts of the missing at the Punchbowl. That same year, Paul was declared non-recoverable. In 1956, Paul and hundreds of other Korean War casualties were reinterred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl Crater in Honolulu. He was referred to as “Unknown X-113″ and buried at the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Taejon, South Korea, then moved to a mortuary in Japan where anthropologists still failed to identify him. Paul, it turned out, had already been found, shortly after the July 1950 battle.

“He had really nice teeth,” Margaret wrote back. They sent her photographs of rings and other jewelry, to see if any of it belonged to her son. Through the years, the Army kept in touch with Margaret, asking her for dental records or whether he had any fractures. They recovered 13 sets of remains, none of them Paul. According to a lengthy report compiled for the Wilkins family, a team of five soldiers from the 392nd Quartermaster Company searched through the Choch’iwan region two years after the battles there, excavating 368 foxholes and fighting positions. 31, 1953, and urged Margaret Wilkins to find “sustaining comfort” in the realization that her son made a “supreme sacrifice.” The Army posthumously promoted Paul from private first class to corporal.Īs Witsell had said to Margaret in 1950, however, the Army didn’t like leaving soldiers unaccounted for. The Army declared a presumptive finding of death for Paul on Dec.

“I never really got a chance to know either one of them,” Walter said. But he was just 15 and his mother wouldn’t sign the waiver needed to enlist. Walter, upon learning of his brothers’ deaths, wanted to join the Army, too.

Joseph Wilkins, to injuries while serving in Korea. In the few short months between Paul’s disappearance and that letter, Margaret lost a second son, Cpl.

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