P-MAN IV - p. 13              

ATTACHMENT 6: Conducting American flag ceremonies in honor of 3 confirmed KIA�s, 1 MIA witnessed by a Palauan to be a KIA, and 1 MIA (actual flags to go to the families or friends as appropriate and if located)

a) Major Harry V. Scullin, VMTB-134 (KIA, Body Not Recovered (BNR), 10 November 44), 09 April 02  See P-MAN III report. During the intervening periods between P-MAN III and P-MAN IV, we were able to locate the two living sisters of MAJ Harry Scullin and notified them of our finding their brother�s TBM-1c Avenger just south of Ngergong during P-MAN III. I sent detailed written information to them concerning the search and, through the courtesy of PostStar Productions, we also sent a video of the crash area. MAJ Scullin never married and his sisters had never been able to find out any information concerning their brother�s death. So my contacting them came as quite a shock. As the P-MAN III team had had a flag ceremony for SGT Bert Smith (the other MIA from this aircraft), the P-MAN IV team felt it appropriate to return to the site to also have a separate American flag ceremony in recognition of MAJ Scullin for his sisters. We unfurled two flags and, after the ceremony, we refolded them.

On 16 September 02, Val Thal, Jennifer Powers, Dan O'Brien and Pat Scannon delivered these two flags in person to MAJ Scullin's two sisters in St. Louis, Missouri - one for each sister. The nephew and namesake of MAJ Scullin, State Senator Harry Kennedy also attended.

b) Unknown Airman, 424thBS/ 307thBG(H) / 13thAAF / B-24-#42-735435 (KIA, BNR, 01 September 44), 12 April 02  Upon interviewing the Palauan (see ATTACHMENT 5a) above) who, as a youth, discovered the body of an American crewmember (most likely from Arnett�s B-24 crew), he agreed to return to that site the next day. Even having had a disabling stroke, he guided us by boat at high tide to a Rock Island along the southern shore of Babeldaob. He pointed from his place on the boat to a small cove along the southern base of the island, which was covered in mangrove. He expressed surprise at seeing this cove now filled with mangroves, as they were not present when he had been here last as a boy.

Under the instruction of our team archeologist, Dr. Bill Belcher, we walked from the boat into the cove and carefully searched the area. No evidence of remains could be found and we noticed that since the cove faced the channel, the body at some point could have floated or been washed out to sea. As to the veracity of this Palauan gentleman, I found his recollections to be amazingly consistent with the after action report from the 307th BG (H). For example, he remembered the bombers� simultaneous arrival from the north and south directions, only a few days before the Peleliu invasion � review of the 307th BG(H) records indicates that on 01 September 44 (and by my review, only on that day during this August – September 1944 campaign) the B-24s split into two groups over Palau, one approaching Koror from the south, the other from the north. The Peleliu invasion occurred on 15 September 44.

We held an American flag ceremony for this lost airman, at the exact site he was last seen. With the PMANIV team standing by our Palauan friends in the muck of the mangroves, I used the following words for the first time (and in all subsequent P-MAN IV ceremonies) from the poem �For the Fallen� by Laurence Binyon:

�� They shall not grow old as we that are left behind grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them��

This flag, along with a second flag unfurled during P-MAN III over the probable gravesite of some of this airman�s fellow crewmembers, was presented on 31 August 02 to C. E. Jordan, President of the 307th BG (H) Association at their reunion in Salt Lake City. Both flags were immediately placed on the ceremonial table for the missing airmen of the 307th..