It’s been 59 years since the brothers parted at boot camp, one to serve a stateside assignment, the other to go into combat in Korea.
Retired Army Sgt. Maj. Charles Gayles hopes the separation will soon end even though his only expectation is to one day bury the remains of his brother, who died a prisoner of war.
Gayles was one of about 120 family members of soldiers and pilots who met with DNA scientists, war archivists and forensic anthropologists Saturday in a mission to recover and identify the remains of those classified as missing in action.
“Please don’t make me go around to all your tables and pick up all your water bottles,” joked James Canik, deputy director of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory.
He coaxed family members to instead voluntarily provide DNA to help speed the process of identifying remains recovered from remote jungles where combat troops were killed or mountain ledges where jets crashed. About 600 government workers from various military and government agencies work full time to recover the remains of about 88,000 missing soldiers.
About 28 Colorado family members responded to the call on Saturday and donated DNA samples.
Others like Gayles met with about 35 scientists and historical experts about the status of the rescue efforts by the Department of Defense’s POW/Missing Personnel Office.
Alvin and Charles Gayles attended Manual High School in Denver before the younger brother, Alvin, then only 17, prodded his older brother Charles, who was 19, into enlisting in the Army.
“He was gung-ho about this. He always thought he was my big little brother,” Charles Gayles said. “Alvin and I joined the Army July 19, 1950, brothers side by side.”
They went to boot camp together, but soon they went in different directions.
Alvin joined the 2nd Infantry Division and the following winter was in the thick of a firefight with Chinese and North Korean troops in a brutally cold winter snowstorm. He was captured with thousands of other U.S. soldiers during a massive retreat. But he never made it to a POW camp. He died and likely was buried near the Yalu River in a deadly trek in enemy territory.
Political animosity between North Korea and the U.S. has prevented wide-scale exhumations of burial sites in North Korea. But DNA scientists are attempting to identify the remains of a few hundred soldiers recovered years ago in the communist country.
Charles Gayles said his brother’s body wasn’t recovered during the lifetimes of his parents, and it may not happen in his lifetime, but his son, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, has also accepted the duty if it comes to that.
“It would be a life’s accomplishment to bring him back,” he said.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
