HANOVER — “He is finally home! After almost 79 years, he is finally home!”
So reads the obituary published earlier this month for Pvt. Robert Herynk, who was killed at age 27 on Thanksgiving Day, 1942, during a fierce battle with the Japanese on the Pacific island of New Guinea.
Herynk was among the first reported casualties from New Guinea — the official campaign began that November and ran through the end of World War II.
But his remains were not identified until 79 years later — Sept. 29, 2021, to be exact.
Now, having been buried and reburied at least four different times at different locales, Herynk will be laid to rest permanently, with full military rites, today — Veterans Day — at St. John’s Catholic Cemetery in his native Hanover.
Forensic analysis, combined with dental records and circumstantial evidence, led to his identification.
Herynk’s immediate family members — his parents, a sister and three brothers — all died praying their missing brother would eventually be located.
Among his surviving relatives are Colony’s Angie Larson and Ann Donaldson of Moran. Their father, the late Rollin Herynk, was a first cousin of Robert’s.
“Dad never talked about him much, but my uncle did,” said Donaldson, who planned to be in Hanover for today’s ceremony.
ROBERT HERYNK was born Aug. 12, 1915, near Hanover, the son of Joseph and Tresa Herynk.
He entered the Army in January 1942, less than a month after Pearl Harbor was attacked, and after basic training joined the 126h Infantry Regiment, 32nd Infantry Division.
Herynk, a private, was assigned to K Company, 3rd Battalion as a rifleman. He left for overseas duty with the rest of the division that April.
Herynk’s unit was sent to New Guinea, a hotly disputed island just north of Australia.
The Japanese coveted the island because of its proximity, considering it a potential springboard to extend the Japanese Empire to the Australian continent.
The Allies, meanwhile, saw an opportunity to cut short the Japanese advances, and a crucial step in MacArthur’s quest to retake the Philippines.
The battles were long, grueling affairs, and not just because of the opposing fighters.
At 303,000 square miles (that’s larger than Texas), New Guinea is the second largest island in the world (behind Greenland) and is divided in the middle by a towering mountain range and dense jungle environs. Toss in frequent monsoons and otherwise miserable conditions, and making advances for either side was difficult at best.
In fact, the Japanese claimed afterward that a vast majority of the country’s 127,000 casualties in the New Guinea campaign came not from enemy fire, but starvation and disease.
So dug in were opposing forces, that the island campaign didn’t end until the war did.
THE NEW GUINEA campaign started about the same time Herynk enlisted, in January 1942.
The Japanese captured Rabaul on the northeastern tip of the island, and quickly established a naval base there, despite the near immediate bombing campaign by Allied forces that followed.
The Japanese had their sights set on a more strategic target on the southern side of the island: Port Moseby. But the Allies had a firm foothold there, and weren’t about to let it go.
Therein lies the crux of the struggle for New Guinea. Unable to rout either side off the island, a tenacious stalemate developed, in which the Japanese maintained their foothold, but often without needed food or ammunition because the Allies held a chokehold on supply routes.
In fact, that’s where Herynk and the rest of K Company, 3rd Battalion entered the fray.
His unit was part of the effort to cut off the Japanese supply and communications line coming from their beachhead at Sanananda Village.
K Company attempted to work its way behind enemy lines, and, on Nov. 26, was part of a coordinated attack against Japanese defenses that would lead to the Huggins Roadblock being established a few days later.
But it came at a cost. Herynk was listed as killed in action on the earliest casualty reports and was reported to have been buried near Buna, New Guinea.
THAT’S WHERE the mystery deepens.
Following the war, the American Graves Registration Service, the organization that searched for and recovered fallen American personnel, conducted exhaustive searches of battle areas and crash sites in New Guinea, concluding their search in late 1948.
Investigators could not find any evidence of Herynk, and he was declared “non-recoverable” Dec. 19, 1949.
Turns out there was a reason his remains weren’t found immediately.
In March 1943, the remains of an unidentified U.S. soldier were recovered near the Sopula-Sanananda Track, but had no visible means of identification. They were buried at a temporary cemetery nearby, and later disinterred and moved three times until being designated as Unknown X-1547 at the Manila Mausoleum and buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines on Jan. 18, 1950.
Beginning in 1995, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (and its predecessor organizations) recovered four men from the Huggins Roadblock area, but found nothing of Herynk.
Undeterred, investigators continued searching elsewhere for Herynk and others still missing, including cemeteries at Buna and Sanandana, and finally at the Manila American Cemetery.
The remains later identified as Herynk’s were disinterred in January 2017 and sent to the DPAA Laboratory at Offutt AFB in Nebraska for examination and analysis.
To gain positive identification, scientists used dental and anthropological analysis, as well as circumstantial evidence. Scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA analysis as well.
Donaldson learned of Herynk’s positive identification after another relative emailed her an article detailing his recovery.
“I’m still stunned,” she said.
Herynk’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, an American Battle Monuments Commission site in the Philippines, along with others still missing from WWII. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.
Officials from DPAA estimate roughly 72,000 Americans remain unaccounted for from World War II.
(Note: Information for the article was gleaned from DPAA.)
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