U.S. Army Sgt. John O. Herrick was just 19 when he was killed on June 6, 1944. Herrick was assigned to Company B, 149th Engineer Combat Battalion. He will receive a full military funeral on Nov. 11 — Veterans Day — at Maplewood Memorial Lawn Cemetery in Emporia, Kan. ( Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency)
EMPORIA, Kan. (Tribune News Service) — Eighty years after he was killed during the Battle of Normandy, U.S. Army Sgt. John O. Herrick is coming home.
Herrick, who was just 19 when he was killed on June 6, 1944, was accounted for on Aug. 21, 2023, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced last week. His niece, Kathleen Herrick Lamb, said knowing the uncle she never knew will finally be laid to rest is a bittersweet feeling.
“It was like someone hit me in the solar plexus,” Lamb told The Gazette. “I was just stunned that after all these years he’s coming home. Then, of course, the sadness comes in that my dad isn’t here so he doesn’t get it see it and my brother, who is his namesake, isn’t here. And I would have loved to have had them here to participate in this.”
According to news clippings detailing his service, John Herrick was the son of Carl and Zola Herrick of Clinton, Tenn. He had two brothers, Bill, who was injured in action during WWII, and Carl Jr., as well as a sister, Bernice. At the time John enlisted, the family lived on a small farm in Bushong. Herrick, who briefly attended Emporia High School, was one of four young graduates of Bushong High School who went missing following the D-Day attacks.
Sgt. Jay Moreland, Staff Sgt. William Wright Moreland and Pvt. Rex Gore were also listed as missing and then killed in action during the D-Day battle.
“He was the youngest, the baby of the family, and he was just your typical rural teenager,” Lamb said. “I know that my dad and his brothers would go out target practicing. ... All three brothers had Harley Davidsons and loved to ride them.”
In June 1944, Herrick was assigned to Company B, 149th Engineer Combat Battalion in the European Theater. On June 6, 1944, which later became known as D-Day, Herrick, and roughly 200 other service members, were aboard Landing Craft Infantry (Large) 92, on the way to Omaha Beach in Normandy, France.
“As LCI-92 steamed toward the shore, it struck an underwater mine which caused the craft to burst into flames,” the DPAA said. “The craft was also hit by enemy artillery fire, causing an explosion that ignited the ships fuel stores and instantly killed everyone in the troop compartment. Due to the urgency of the situation, it was impossible for others to search for survivors. Herrick’s remains were not accounted for after the war.”
A few days later, members of the 500th Medical Collecting Company examined the wreckage of LCI-92. The American Graves Registration Command (AGRC), the organization that searched for and recovered fallen American personnel in the European Theater, removed small amounts of remains from LCI-92 before burying them in the United States Military Cemetery St. Laurent-sur-Mer in Normandy.
In 1946, AGRC reexamined the remains, identifying them as four separate unknown soldiers, before interring them in Normandy American Cemetery, an American Battle Monuments Commission site.
In June and August 2021, the Department of Defense and ABMC officials exhumed the remains of four Unknowns and sent them to the DPAA Laboratory for analysis. To identify Herrick’s remains, DPAA scientists conducted anthropological analysis. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System utilized mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y-chromosome DNA (Y-STR) analysis.
Lamb said her father, Carl Jr., had been the one that signed the papers that allowed her Uncle John to enlist in the army.
“My dad didn’t talk about the war itself,” she said. “My dad and my Uncle Bill had a strange sense of humor. They would always talk about how my Uncle Bill got shot in the head, that he had a hard head, but that’s the only part of the war he would talk about. He signed papers for Uncle John to go into the army. My grandfather did not sign those papers, so I imagine that it was hard on my dad.”
Lamb said that even her grandparents didn’t talk much about her Uncle John or the war. But the family remembered him in other ways.
Lamb’s brother, who was born just a month after her uncle was killed, was named after her Uncle John.
“My dad would always say, ‘We picked the right name for you. You’re just like your uncle,’” she said. “John was very charismatic and smart and ornery, and I think that’s how my Uncle John was, too.”
Knowing that her uncle will now return back to Lyon County brings a sense of relief to Lamb. Her uncle will receive a full military funeral on Nov. 11 — Veterans Day — at Maplewood Memorial Lawn Cemetery in Emporia.
The date also coincides with what would have been Herrick’s 100th birthday.
“He was born on Nov. 11,” Lamb said. “He is being honored a lot. We lost a lot of young men, but to lose him at 19, just starting out in life and dying the way he would have died, it just makes me very proud of the community and of the nation to honor those that we lost.”
Lamb is also grateful for how Herrick, and the other Bushong veterans, have been remembers at the North Lyon County Veterans Memorial in Bushong.
“Dianne [Bedner-Smith] has just done an amazing job up there and with very little funding,” Lamb said. “She’s made it wonderful for the families and the people that go up there and learn about the history and my uncle is a part of that.”
Herrick’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France.
Now, a rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.
“I’m very thankful that they have identified him and that he’s coming home,” Lamb said.
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