Manning man's brother, missing-in-action during WWII, identified 70 years later
ROBERT J. BAKER / TIMES Ted Gardner, right, and his sister, Sarah Shaw of Andrews, look over a book given to them by the Department of Defense and compiled by various agencies for families of casualties of war. The siblings' half-brother, Charles Arthur Gardner, was recently identified after 70 years from remains found in New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean.
ROBERT J. BAKER / TIMES Ted Gardner, right, and his sister, Sarah Shaw of Andrews, look over a book given to them by the Department of Defense and compiled by various agencies for families of casualties of war. The siblings' half-brother, Charles Arthur Gardner, was recently identified after 70 years from remains found in New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean.
Manning resident Ted Gardner can remember one of the few times his father cried.
"The day he got the notice that my brother was missing overseas, he sat at the table, put his head down and cried," Gardner said Thursday shortly after officials with the Department of Defense confirmed that his long-lost brother, Charles Arthur Gardner, had been identified from a collection of remains found on the island of New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean.
Charles Arthur Gardner was presumed dead after he went missing in April 1944, when the younger Gardner was just 16. The elder Gardner, 32, was a staff sergeant and radio operator in the Army Air Corps helping with flying missions over the Pacific Theater. His remains were among those of eight servicemen found in the northern part of the island between 2008-11.
"I never met him personally; he was my half-brother," Gardner said. "But I knew him through the stories my father would tell, and I certainly talked with him on the phone."
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