When my uncle's plane went down in WWII New Guinea, he was declared KIA, though his body was never recovered. It was assumed his plane went down in the Pacific. The feds gave my grandmother a memorial stone for him. Many years later, when she died and was buried in a country cemetery in North Georgia, along side my grandfather, who had died decades before, I saw the stone for my uncle because it was in the same cemetery plot next to the graves of his parents. It looked like a grave marker, but there was no grave because there was no body. But it was in a cemetery. It was a memorial, in a cemetery, that looked like a grave stone.
About two years ago, the family learned that his plane had been found, not in the ocean, but crashed into the side of a mountain.The remains and some personal affects of the crew were recovered and sent home. My uncle received an awesome homecoming honoring his service. He was buried in a cemetery in another part of the state, chosen by his daughter.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2011/jan/31/remains-wwii-gunner-chastain-flown-home/
https://www.google.com/search?q=berthold+chastain&client=firefox-a&hs=6Lk&rls=Palemoon:en-US:official&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=EgnqUevfGIfY9QSijIGICA&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1264&bih=631
Because I haven't been notified otherwise, my assumption is that the original stone still remains in the cemetery next to his parents' graves perhaps forty miles from where his remains were interred, with, presumably, a proper grave marker. But for 60 years, the original memorial stone marked a non-grave, and if he had never been found, it always would mark an empty grave...
Perhaps, now that he has been found and interred elsewhere, the original stone should be removed, lest my family be considered disrespectful for marking a non-grave.
Andy didn't post my comment, of course. I explained how he came to ban my comments here: Pusillanimous Poltroons. In fact, he is so incensed that I would challenge the motives, or agenda, or character of the critics of Confederate heritage, he won't reply to me even in comment threads on other people's blogs. Or maybe he's skeered. Of course, it's okay for him to question the motives, or agenda, or character of heritage folks, and he does it quite frequently at Dead Confederates. Call it the Flogger Double Standard, because they all exhibit it, in one form or another.
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Image of granite rock: Smithsonian Museum of Natural History
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