Hundreds pay graveside respects to a Korean War casualty they never knew

HILL CITY, MINN. – Among the hundreds at a graveside service for Rosslyn Edward Gresens, killed in action while serving in Korea in 1950, fewer than a handful had met him.

His niece Judy Pierce has a photograph of herself as a small child standing next to him. Ross Hogate, an urn bearer, was named for his great uncle. Bert Kortekaas, 96, was a classmate in Hill City, but too much time has passed for him to remember specifics about Gresens.

While Gresens still has family in this part of northern Minnesota, many of the attendees were veterans who wanted to pay respect to one of their own — and were glad to know that the search for those who were lost continues.

Gresens’ remains were identified by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency earlier this year — 75 years after he went missing during a patrol. On Monday, Gresens was buried with military honors at Macville Cemetery in Swatara, Minn., 6 miles south of his hometown. He had enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1949.

“It’s a big deal for everybody,” said Floodwood Mayor Tad Farrell, who cleared his calendar for the service. “Nobody wants to leave anybody behind, whether it’s Hill City or Los Angeles County. It’s a big deal to have a brother come home.”

Pierce couldn’t help but think of her late grandmother Hattie Gresens, Rosslyn’s mother.

“She always, always thought he would come home,” Pierce said. “She thought he was still missing. She held on to that and prayed he would come home.”

“We like to think of it as, ‘He’s finally home, in his mother’s arms,’” said Tim Tarmann of Rowe Funeral Home & Cremation Services in Grand Rapids.

Gresens’ remains, in about a 3-foot coffin, were carried past dozens of veterans holding American flags and down a makeshift aisle between rows of folding chairs while a bagpiper played. The 15-minute service included a flag-folding ceremony, a gun salute, the presentation of next of kin and the playing of taps. Rev. Michael L. Eckert of Trinity Lutheran Church of Hill City officiated. An Aitkin County fire truck, ladder extended, carried the American flag.

Back in Hill City, volunteers had set up a reception of pulled pork, drinks and desserts. Tables were set up on a blocked-off Lake Avenue near City Hall, which had its flag at half-staff for the occasion. Inside the government building, there has long hung a copy of an old Minneapolis Sunday Tribune’s Roto Magazine supplement with an article about the price of war on Hill City.

A grainy photo shows Gresens’ parents holding a photo of him. They had recently learned that their son wasn’t on a list of prisoners of war.

On Friday, a contingent from Hill City and the funeral home met Gresens’ flight from Honolulu at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. A procession brought him north.

“It’s good that we’re still out looking for our guys,” he said. “There are families that never got that closure.”

Gresens was posthumously awarded a Silver Star, Purple Heart, Combat Infantryman Badge, Korean Service Medal and other honors. He was promoted to sergeant.

Gresens, a member of Company B, 3rd Engineer Combat Battalion, 24th Infantry Division, had been missing since his 14-man patrol went on a mission to cross lines to gauge the strength of the enemy, according to a newly written obituary.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said Gresens was on a patrol on the west side of the Naktong River. According to news reports at the time, the men were 5,000 feet over enemy lines. The patrol suffered “heavy losses” and crossed the river.

“Gresens was last seen providing fire in a rice paddy, but did not rejoin the withdrawing soldiers,” the organization said earlier this year.

Pierce has been aware of efforts to identify her late uncle since about 2009, when she was contacted by the military for a DNA sample. She remembers standing with her phone to her ear, overcome with emotion for an uncle she barely remembered.

“I think most of my emotion is all because I loved my grandma,” she said. “I was close to her; I grew up with her. It was not so much the loss of Rossi, who I hardly knew, but her love and her constant belief that he would come home.”