U.S. Army Air Forces navigator 2nd Lt. Porter M. Pile and radio operator Tech Sgt. James M. Triplett went down with their B-24 bomber over Germany on Sept. 27, 1944. During a raid on the German city of Kassel, approximately 150 enemy fighters attacked their bomber and the other 35 bombers of the 700th Bombardment Squadron, 445th Bomb Group. Pile and Triplett’s bomber suffered heavy damage and caught fire. Three men bailed out, but Pile, Triplett and three other crewmen were lost. Pile was last seen with an injured leg by one of the bomber’s exits. For the next 79 years, Pile and Triplett were considered missing in action.
For years, their families held out hope that both men had somehow survived and were living in prisoner of war camps. According to nephew Tom Triplett, “Until my grandmother died 28 years after the war, she thought her son would walk through the front door.”
The U.S. military, however, never gave up searching for the two crewmen. Remains were found at the crash site in 1951 but could not be identified. It would take two more excavations, in 2015 and 2016 by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, to identify the remains and contact the families.
The next of kin for each man knew little of their heroic uncles. Tom Triplett was only three when he met his uncle. “He was 33 when he volunteered,” said Triplett, which made him the oldest crewmember on that flight. Randy Fleuriet, Pile’s nephew, remembered his parents’ grief. “My mother would tell me about her brother being killed,” he said. “His parents and two sisters went to their graves without knowing what happened to him.” Fleuriet eventually contacted Triplett, and the two families decided to have a dual funeral service at Arlington National Cemetery.
The Oct. 31, 2023 service began with a flyover by a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport aircraft from the 700th Airlift Squadron, the legacy unit of the 700th Bombardment Squadron. Army Chaplain (Cpt.) Brady Feltz gave the eulogy, emphasizing that both Pile and Triplett “are members of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, signifying that they have shed their blood in defense of our nation.”
A firing party then fired three volleys, a bugler sounded Taps and an Army band played “America the Beautiful.” Two honor guard teams folded American flags over the side-by-side caskets and presented them to two officers, who then presented each flag to the families.
Receiving the flag for Pile’s family was nine-year-old Porter Spencer, 2nd Lt. Pile’s great-grandnephew and namesake. It was Fleuriet’s idea for young Porter to accept the flag. “We needed a keeper of the flag,” said Fleuriet, “so giving it to Porter, named after Porter Pile, seemed like the right thing to do.”
At the end of the service, a group from the Kassel Mission Historical Society presented the families with fragments from their relatives’ bomber, recovered from the crash site. Their representative then told both families, “May we always revere and remember their bravery and dedication.”