NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — North Adams is set to welcome home another long lost son from World War II.
Pvt. First Class Erwin S. King of Clarksburg had barely been put to rest in Southview Cemetery when news that another missing serviceman has been identified.
City Veterans Service Officer Mitchell Keil notified press on Friday that "lightning can strike the same place twice."
"Shortly after the services rendered on Tuesday, Sept. 24, we were informed that another local World War 2 servicemember has been recovered," he wrote. "Army Air Forces PFC Bernard Calvi has been accounted for and will be returned to North Adams in the near future.
"We are currently awaiting more information from the family but they have expressed the same desire in wanting to ensure their relative receives a similar hero's welcome as to the one this week."
Bernard Calvi had enlisted in the Army Air Forces on September 1941. He and William P. Gilman Jr. of North Adams, good friends and classmates, had been stationed in the Philippines with the 17th Pursuit Squadron five weeks before Imperial Japan launched its attack against United States and Allied installations across the South Pacific.
They disappeared after the fall of Corregidor, an island in Manila Bay to which U.S. forces had retreated, in May 1942. Calvi's parents, Lena and Joseph of Quincy Street, were informed in 1945 that their son had died July 16, 1942; Gilman's were told earlier that their son had died as a prisoner of war in June 1943.
According to the North Adams Transcript, Gilman and Calvi had been teammates on Drury's football, baseball and basketball teams. The had enlisted together and went through training together.
Calvi, a 1936 Drury High graduate, not been been officially reported as missing or as a prisoner of war, according to media reports at the time. His parents knew he had been on Corregidor at one point after seeing him in a group picture in an April issue of Life magazine.
Both classmates had been injured in the initial attack that began Dec. 8, 1941, and later returned to duty under Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright. Messages from them had come from through the Red Cross in April but their last correspondence would be in August 1942, when letters sent six months previously finally arrived.
They would be subject to the infamous Bataan Death March during which American service members and allies were brutally marched to POW camps. The were both imprisoned at Cabanatuan Prison Camp, the largest of the camps on Luzon.
Calvi died of malaria and dysentery on July 16, 1942.
Some 2,800 prisoners died in the camp after suffering from starvation, disease and dysentery. They were buried in makeshift communal graves, which made identifying and recovering remains after the war difficult, according to the Department of Defense's POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
Gilman's remains are among the more than 1,000 still unidentified. He died on Aug. 25, 1942, only a month after his friend Calvi, according to more current records. The old honor roll at the library had been dedicated by his father, William P. Gilman, in 1943.
DPAA is tasked with recovering American service members missing in action and had played a key role in the recovery of King from Guadalcanal.
Calvi's remains are currently in Hawai'i. They will be returned to Massachusetts for services at St. Elizabeth's Church and interment in Southview Cemetery.
