PFC Johnny Herbert Mayberry

Johnny Herbert Mayberry was born June 2, 1932 in Jenny Lind, AR to Jerry Thomas Mayberry and Emma Degen Mayberry. Johnny died November 28, 1950 in the line of duty serving the U.S. Army during the Korean Conflict. His remains were found and positively identified with family DNA and returned home for burial.

He is survived by one sister, Alice Baker of Fort Smith; one brother, Jerry C. Mayberry of Fort Smith and several nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his father, and his mother and sister Ruby Franklin died following his death in Korea.

Funeral service was Friday, August 28, 2009 at 10:00 AM in the Edwards Funeral Home Chapel and burial will follow with Full Military Honors in the U.S. National Cemetery all under the direction of Edwards Funeral Home.

Local Newspaper and TV articles, published during August 25-28, 2009 in Fort Smith, Arkansas:

Nearly 60 years after an Arkansas soldier disappeared on a frozen battlefield during the Korean War, his remains will be laid to rest in Fort Smith.

The family of Pfc. Johnny Herbert Mayberry plans a burial with full military honors Friday at the U.S. National Cemetery in Fort Smith. They were notified last month that his remains were identified through DNA testing. Mayberry had been missing since he was reported killed in action November 28, 1950, at the age of 18.

His remains were found at the Chosin Reservoir when a team of U.S. military personel went to North Korea in 2004 after extensive negotiations with the government. Using U.S. records, workers discovered a grave containing the bone fragments of seven men about 10 miles north of the village of Hagaru-Ri.

"This is a case where the men who served with him have wondered for years," said Ted Barker, a director of the Korean War Project, which seeks to identify remains of the war's soldiers by cataloging DNA from surviving family members. "There are very few found, but each one of them makes a huge difference to the men and to the family."

About 8,100 U.S. servicemen who fought in the Korean War are not fully accounted for, Barker said. Since 1992, the Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command has identified the remains of fewer than 200 people through DNA testing in a special forensics lab at Hickman Air Force Base in Hawaii.

About 300,000 soldiers and marines in the battle at Chosin Reservoir- known as "the frozen Chosin" because of subzero ground temperatures- were overwhelmed unexpectedly by 120,000 Chinese troops, said A.W. Busbea of North Little Rock, a former marine who now directs the Chosin Reservoir Foundation. They retreated, leaving many of the dead behind to be buried in shallow graves.

Larry Greer, spokesman for the personnel missing in action office at the Pentagon, said an estimated 1,079 remains still surround Chosin in what is now northeast North Korea.

Lost Soldier Buried

By Rusty Garrett

TIMES RECORD · [email protected]

Saturday, August 29, 2009 12:39 PM CDT

Fort Smith welcomed home one of its heroes Friday.

In the company of family and friends, Johnny Herbert Mayberry was buried with full military honors at National Cemetery.

Photos by Carrol Copeland • Times Record

1st Lt. Ethan Millard with the Arkansas Army National Guard Military Funeral Honors presents a folded flag to Jerry C. Mayberry, brother of Pfc. Johnny Herbert Mayberry. Funeral services were held Friday for Johnny Mayberry, who died Nov. 28, 1950, in Korea.

Chaplain LTC Wesley Hilliard officiates Friday at the funeral of Pfc. Johnny Herbert Mayberry, who was killed during the Korean War.

Fred Coleman, a relative of the Mayberrys, holds an American flag in front of the entrance to the U.S. National Cemetery.

Mayberry, an Army private first class, was a few months past his 18th birthday when enemy fire cut him down in battle near the Chosin Reservoir in Korea.

Family members, including Mayberry’s brother, Jerry C. Mayberry, and his sister, Alice Baker, gathered with family friends for a brief service at Edwards Funeral Home. Also present were several veterans who had also served in Korea.

Chaplain Lt. Col. Wesley Hilliard officiated at the service, where he praised Mayberry as a “hometown hero who loved his country and gave his life for its freedom.”

Hilliard talked of Mayberry’s youth in Fort Smith, his joining the Army at age 17 and his deployment to Korea.

He recounted official records of the action in which Mayberry was killed by small arms fire and told how a recovery team located his remains in 2004, returned them to the country and later identified them, relying on a DNA match to samples submitted by his sisters and brother.

Hilliard said Mayberry’s mother, Emma, cried long after the loss of her son, and pleaded with military authorities to “find her baby” and carry him home. The effort to recover Mayberry’s body continued after his mother’s death, promoted strongly by his older sister, Ruby.

Hilliard said in 1999 Mayberry’s siblings, participating in a government program, submitted DNA samples in hopes of learning the fate of their lost brother.

“Emma and Ruby would be happy today,” Hilliard said, to witness Mayberry’s return to his final resting place.

Also offering memories of Mayberry at the service was Bill Vines, a boyhood friend. He talked of Mayberry’s youth and his membership in a group of “rounders” who called themselves the Bailey Hill Boys, in reference to their Fort Smith neighborhood.

Following the service and a funeral procession to the National Cemetery, Mayberry was afforded military honors, including a ceremonial 21-gun salute, a playing of taps and the presentation to the family of the American flag that covered his casket.

Talking of her brother at a Thursday night visitation, Baker said the ceremonial return of Mayberry’s remains in Oklahoma and the preparations for the funeral had been “very emotional.”

She said while the family was relieved by the closure the event would bring, she regretted her parents and sister Ruby did not live to see it.

“He always talked about being a soldier,” she said of her brother. “He wanted to fight for his country.”

Mayberry’s older brother, Jerry, said the family “held out hope for a long time” that Johnny’s remains would be found so he could be buried at home.

Now that has happened, he said, “I’m not quite sure how to feel.”

Mayberry died on Nov. 28, 1950, early in the Korean War. The battle, waged over a 17-day period in brutal cold and nicknamed by veterans as “The Frozen Chosin,” pitted some 30,000 troops fighting under the flag of the United Nations against a force of 150,000 Chinese troops that had recently entered the conflict.

The conflict was significant, with both sides claiming victory.

The Chinese ultimately drove forces from the Chosin Reservoir area while U.N. troops proved their fighting mettle, inflicting heavy casualties on the Chinese forces during withdrawal.

The death of Mayberry and those of other area men who made the sacrifice for freedom was reported in local newspaper. The Dec. 19, 1950, Times Record noted Mayberry was a 1948 graduate of Fort Smith High School and had been in active duty in Korea since September. According to the story, Mayberry was awarded the Purple Heart, Korean Service Medal, United Nations Service Medal and the National Defense Service Medal.

The boy who had grown up playing with friends on Bailey Hill was among 36,000 U.S. servicemen killed in the three-year conflict. And until recently he was counted among more than 8,100 of those listed as missing in action.

Army Sgt. Clinton Langaway said Mayberry’s remains were located in a shallow grave near the Chosin Reservoir with those of six victims of the conflict. Their discovery was made on a 2004 mission undertaken after extensive negotiations with the government of North Korea. So far Langaway said one other GI from the group has been identified.

The recovery, identification and return of Mayberry to his family and home is part of the monumental effort undertaken by the Department of Defense’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command. The unit’s mission is to achieve the fullest possible accounting of all Americans missing as a result of the nation’s past conflicts.

Those numbers include the 35,000 still considered recoverable from the 78,000 lost during World War II, and the 1,800 still-missing casualties from the Vietnam War.

Langaway said the JPAC currently has 1,000 active cases and is putting a name with remains at a rate of about six per month. It is a process that can take months, even years.

The matching of mitochondrial DNA is reinforced by intensive investigation of other remains found with the bodies: clothing and equipment, the matching of medical or dental records with evidence of conditions found on bones and teeth, and whether location of remains corresponds with records of where fallen men had been fighting.

Langaway said the family had asked that publicity about their brother include information about the JPAC program and encouragement that those seeking to learn the fate of family members missing in combat contact the missing person programs assigned for each branch of the military services.

That information can be found on a link from the JPAC Web site: www.jpac.pacom.mil.

Channel 5 news station:

Soldier Buried in National Cemetery 58 Years After His Death

Hundreds line Fort Smith streets to pay respects

Russell Jones Reporter

August 28, 2009

FORT SMITH, Ark. - After nearly 60 years, a Fort Smith soldier killed in the Korean War has finally been laid to rest in the National Cemetery.

Funeral services for Pfc. Johnny Mayberry were held Friday in Fort Smith. Mayberry was killed when he was 18 and serving with the Army at the Chosin Reservoir in what is now North Korea.

His body, along with the remains of more than a thousand other soldiers, was left behind by soldiers retreating from a Chinese force that outnumbered them almost seven to one. In 2004, it was recovered by members of the Korean War Project, and later identified from DNA submitted by his family.

"It means a closure to all of this," said Alice Baker, Mayberry's sister. "We've looked forward to all of this for sixty years, hoping and praying to have this."

After Mayberry's funeral, a veterans' motorcycle group led the funeral procession down Garrison Avenue, where hundreds of people stood waving flags to honor Mayberry's service.

""That meant so much, the respect they showed for my brother, that really did," said Baker.

"I could not believe it, I had a hard time driving I was so touched with it all," said Bill Vines, Fort Smith's former mayor and a childhood friend of Mayberry's.

At the cemetery Mayberry was laid to rest with full military honors, with other presentations by the American Legion and other veterans. Walter Morton, who served with the First Marines Division stationed near the Chosin Reservoir, said he remembered when they were given the order to pull back, leaving many of their comrades behind.

"We wanted to go get them, but it was an impossibility," he said.

"They can't spend enough money to go get them and bring them back, it's the greatest thing they've ever done."

According to military records, there are still more than 1,000 unidentified soldiers' remains left in the Chosin Reservoir.

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