Lt. Carroll Napier Langston
TUSCUMBIA-The American Legion Post 31 Color Guard of Tuscumbia, Alabama will travel to Greenwood Cemetery, Nashville, Tennessee on Saturday, June 10, to provide full military honors in memory of Lt. Carroll Napier Langston, Tuskegee Airman – on the 69th ultimate sacrifice anniversary of his service to the nation in WW2.
Lt. Carroll Napier Langston, a Tuskegee Airman, assigned to the 332nd Fighter Group, 301st Fighter Squadron based at Ramitelli Air Base, Italy lost his life after his squadron completed a strike mission on 7 June 1944 when his P47-D aircraft lost oil pressure.
Parachuting safely into the Adriatic Sea, approximately ten nautical miles off Italy’s San Benedetto coast, Air Sea Rescue and his unit’s subsequent search failed to find him or his aircraft.
His body was found on 26 June 1944 (nearly two and a half weeks later) by a U.S. Army ground patrol washed ashore near Pineta Italy. The commanding officer reported that he appeared to have received gunshot wounds to the head and chest.
With his personal effects recovered by the patrol Lt. Langston was wrapped in a mattress cover (the only material available in the field) and was laid to rest in a shallow grave near railroad tracks with his I.D. tags and name written on the wooden cross marking the site of his burial.
Lt. Langston, cousin to Tom McKnight, (Post 31 Color Guard member) whose genealogical research began over a decade ago led to discovery of his ancestral roots in north Alabama and settlement in the area was engaged in a decade long search to discover if Lt. Langston’s remains had been repatriated to the U.S. or was still interred on Italy’s eastern coast.
Unrelenting research which continues, guided by what McKnight refers to as “Divine Intervention,” and “ancestral led shoulder taps,” resulting in the receipt of information from unexpected sources so that the “ancestor’s stories are not long gone and forgotten,” revealed that Lt. Langston’s remains were exhumed on three separate occasions; once from the original burial spot and re-interred at a cemetery not far from the original site; disinterred again as the U.S. Army Quartermaster and Graves Registration Unit recovered the Airman and laid him to rest for the third time at Bari Military Cemetery, a location honoring participants in both World Wars.
Lt. Langston’s final recovery from Bari Military cemetery and return to the United States to his parents, Carroll Napier Langston Sr., and wife Vivian, after an agonizingly long wait of four and a half years, resulted in Lt. Langston’s final resting place interment in a privately held family service on 7 December 1948.
Post 31 Color Guard will be providing full honors comprising flag fold, rifle volley and the playing of Taps.
Media Release/Thomas McKnight
