LOCK — Wayne D. Crowl left his home in late 1940 to enter the Army Air Corps. The Lock veteran finally returned home for good on April 12, 2024.
He will be interred in Lock Cemetery on Friday, April 26, at 11 a.m. The procession starts at the Crouse-Kauber funeral home in Johnstown. A color guard will meet at the cemetery.
The community is invited to attend.
For the family, Crowl’s homecoming answers a lot of questions.
An unexpected phone call
On Sept. 19, 2021, Johnstown resident Joyce Evans returned home to find a beep on her answering machine.
“I’m Charles Fisher with the Army. My job is to contact people to see if they would be willing to send DNA,” said the unknown voice.
“He said they were looking for missing or unaccounted for veterans in World War I, the Civil War, and on down,” Evans explained.
Fisher contacted Evans because her uncle, 1st Lt. Wayne D. Crowl, was killed in action in France in January 1944, just a few months before she was born.
Evans’ DNA could potentially match remains that the U.S. Department of Defense has recovered over the years.
Evans agreed to provide a DNA sample but also asked whether the Army had contacted Wayne’s brother Richard.
“They didn’t know he was still alive,” Evans said.
She called Richard, told him about the phone call, and asked what he remembered of Wayne’s funeral. He recalled a casket in the living room for five or six days.
“That told me right there that there was no body in there,” Evans said.
The same day, she called her daughter-in-law, who in turn told Evans’ three grandsons, all of whom are in the military.
One grandson, Graydon Evans, threw himself into researching Crowl’s military history.
On Jan. 4, 2024, the phone rang.
“We found him,” said the Army’s Michael Mean.
“I couldn’t fathom that it was actually happening,” Evans said. “It’s 80 years since he was killed.”
“She was on edge,” Evans’ husband, Larry, said of the wait for news.
A military escort delivered Crowl’s remains to Evans on April 12.
A hero’s service
Wayne Crowl was born on July 30, 1917, to Forrest and Ethel Crowl. He grew up on the family farm in Lock.
Evans said he earned the nickname “Trot” because he ran everywhere. He frequently signed his letters with the moniker.
The Lock veteran worked for the Jewell Creamery in Mount Vernon until the Army drafted him on Nov. 14, 1940. Just three weeks later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, drawing the United States into World War II.
Training at bases through the U.S., Crowl qualified as a bombardier on the B-24 Liberator. He earned the rank of 2nd Lt. on March 7, 1943.
Assigned to the 68th Bomb Squadron of the 44th Bomb Group, he deployed to Shipdham, England, in October 1943. On Nov. 3, 1943, Crowl flew his first mission, bombing port and dock facilities in Germany.
Many of the raids were daylight raids, which made them very dangerous.
On Jan. 16, 1943, the Lock veteran wrote to his grandparents, John and Mary Bone, in Mount Vernon, of his promotion to 1st Lieutenant.
He noted, “Things are looking better, and I think they will improve as we keep up the tempo.”
He also wrote to his brother, Richard.
A fateful day in January
Crowl’s 13th mission, five days after writing to his grandparents and brother, proved fatal.
According to Graydon Evans’ research, the squadron participated in Operation Crossbow on Jan. 21, 1944. The goal was to bomb Germany’s V-1 rocket sites in Escalles-sur-buchy, northern France, rendering them useless.
It was a cloudy day, and the seven planes made four passes over the target before dropping their bombs on the fifth. Crowl sighted enemy fighters at 11 a.m.
Crowl’s B-24 engaged and, moments later, was hit with enemy fire, killing Crowl, navigator 2nd Lt. Richard Kasten, and co-pilot 1st Lt. Herman Curtis.
As the plane fell, the rest of the crew bailed out. Pilot Capt. Hartwell Howington maintained control until his crew evacuated but crashed in a farm field outside of Lignières-Châtelain.
The townspeople buried Crowl, Kasten, and Curtis in Poix, about 10 miles from the crash site.
“The farmers buried him so the Germans wouldn’t take their stuff,” Joyce Evans explained. “In 1945, they exhumed him and put him in a military cemetery.
“In 1949, my grandmother said, ‘I want him home.’”
What came home was a bombardier jacket with Crowl’s name on it. That is what was in the casket in the living room and what is interred in Lock Cemetery.
Evans said her grandmother, Wayne’s mother, rarely talked about the event.
“I was reading her diaries and realized how much it devastated her,” Evans said. “My mother was also affected.”
“The family had their closure, and they were satisfied with that,” Larry Evans said of the 1949 interment.
“We know all the details now. The family never knew that he was a hero.”
Home with family
Joyce Evans summed up her feelings in one word: pride.
“I’m very proud that he’s come home. I’m very proud that our whole family has been very military. We give it our all, pretty much,” she said.
“It’s very gratifying that he’s going to be home with our family.”
Graydon Evans got in touch with family members of Crowl’s crew, telling them what happened.
“He spent hours on the phone,” Larry Evans said. “They had no idea until Graydon enlightened them.”
Howington’s daughter was 17 months old when he flew the mission. Now 82, she is planning to attend Friday’s ceremony.
The Curtis family also plans to visit.
The Kasten family of Battle Creek, Michigan, had a family interment for navigator Richard Kasten. They, too, only had a jacket with a name on it to bury.
“Since then, I found out this was very common, burying something with just a name on it,” Joyce Evans said.
The Department of Defense has used DNA testing to identify remains for several decades. Over the years, technology has improved the success rate.
In fiscal year 2023, the lab recovered the remains of 127 missing service members. Nearly 81,000 American service members remain missing.
“Many of the family members are gone, that’s the sad part,” Larry Evans said.
