Young Montana Airmen Flew Home a Soldier Who Died at Their Age 85 Years Ago
When airmen from Montana's 120th Airlift Wing landed a C-130H at Bert Mooney Airport on April 15, they carried the flag-draped remains of U.S. Army Pvt. Harry David Bordner, who died at 24 in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines. Many of the crew members were barely older than Bordner was when he took his last breath in 1942.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency accounted for Bordner in 2025 after he spent eight decades buried as an unknown. The Montana National Guard reported that modern forensic techniques, DNA analysis, dental records, and anthropological examination, finally attached a name to remains that had waited through 14 presidential administrations. The agency continues working to identify roughly 72,000 Americans still missing from World War II, a number that shrinks each year as biological samples from surviving family members become harder to obtain.
Bordner served with the 194th Tank Battalion when Japanese forces overran the Philippines in early 1942. He survived the Bataan Death March, a forced transfer of 75,000 Filipino and American prisoners that killed thousands through execution, disease, and exhaustion, only to die in captivity at a POW camp. The exact date and cause of his death remain unclear from available military records, but he was one of approximately 23,000 American servicemembers who died in Japanese custody during the war.
The identification process that brought Bordner home began with remains recovered from a burial site in the Philippines, cross-referenced against casualty records and compared to DNA samples from living relatives. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency operates laboratories in Hawaii and Nebraska that process remains from conflicts dating back to World War II, though the pace of identifications has accelerated in the past decade as genetic technology improved. What once required intact skeletal structures can now proceed with bone fragments smaller than a fingernail.
The Mission to Butte
Col. John Salotti, commander of the 120th Operations Group, oversaw the transport mission that brought Bordner back to Butte. The Montana National Guard coordinated with casualty assistance personnel and local partners to choreograph the dignified transfer ceremony that met the aircraft. These ceremonies follow strict military protocol: a slow march, white-gloved hands, specific positioning of honor guards, and complete silence except for commands.
The 120th Airlift Wing typically flies cargo and personnel missions across the western United States, but several times each year the unit transports remains of servicemembers killed decades ago. Each mission requires crew briefings that include the fallen soldier's biography, service record, and hometown connections. Pilots and loadmasters learn the names, see the photographs from before deployment, and understand the families who waited.
Butte sent more than 5,000 residents to serve in World War II from a population that barely exceeded 40,000. The mining city's contribution per capita ranked among the highest in Montana, and nearly every neighborhood lost someone. Bordner's return connected to that collective memory, even as the number of Butte residents who personally remember the war dwindles each year.
Full Military Honors After 85 Years
Bordner received full military honors upon arrival, a ritual that mirrors the ceremonies given to servicemembers killed last week. The flag folding, the rifle volleys, the playing of Taps, none of it changes based on how long someone has been gone. The Montana National Guard reported that dozens of Butte residents attended the dignified transfer at the airport, standing in April cold to witness a homecoming that their grandparents had stopped expecting.
The funeral took place on Friday, April 18, at St. Ann's Catholic Church in Butte, the same church that likely held a memorial service for Bordner in 1942 or 1943 when the War Department first notified his family of his death. A graveside service with military honors followed at 12:15 p.m. at Mountain View Cemetery, where Bordner was buried among other Butte veterans from conflicts spanning the past century.
The precision of that timing, 12:15 p.m., not "early afternoon" or "around noon", reflects the military's approach to these ceremonies. Every element gets scheduled, rehearsed, and executed exactly as planned. The honor guard practices the flag fold. The bugler confirms the acoustics. The chaplain times the benediction. Even 85 years late, the system ensures the ritual unfolds without error.
The Families Who Waited
Whether any of Bordner's immediate family survived to see his return remains unclear from available reporting. At 24 when he died, Bordner may have had parents who spent decades checking the mail for updates, siblings who grew old wondering where their brother rested, or nieces and nephews who knew him only through photographs and stories that grew hazier with each retelling.
The mathematics of these delayed returns work against closure. A parent who was 45 when Bordner died in 1942 would be 129 now. Siblings close to his age would be in their late 90s or beyond. The circle of people who personally remember Harry David Bordner as a living person, who heard his voice, knew his habits, could describe his personality beyond what's written in military files, has likely closed entirely.
That makes these identifications both triumph and tragedy. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency delivers on the promise that America leaves no soldier behind, but time has already taken the people who waited most desperately for that promise to be kept. The great-nieces and great-nephews who might have attended Bordner's funeral carry genetic material that made his identification possible, but they're receiving remains of someone they never met.
What the Airmen Carried
For the Montana Guard crew members who flew Bordner home, the mission offered a different kind of weight than their usual cargo runs. They're young enough that World War II exists for them the way the Civil War existed for their grandparents, a historical fact, not a living memory. Yet in the C-130's cargo hold, history became physical: a transfer case, a flag, a 24-year-old who never got to be 25.
The 120th Airlift Wing will fly more of these missions. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identifies roughly 200 servicemembers per year from past conflicts, and that number could increase as the agency applies new forensic techniques to remains that were previously unidentifiable. Each identification triggers the same careful choreography: notification of family, coordination with home state National Guard units, dignified transfer, full military honors.
Bordner's grave at Mountain View Cemetery now has a name and dates instead of "Unknown." The Montana Guard airmen who brought him home returned to their regular flight schedules, carrying cargo that doesn't require white gloves and silence. And somewhere in the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency's laboratories, technicians continue extracting DNA from bone fragments, matching genetic markers to family samples, attaching names to the thousands of Americans still buried as unknowns in foreign soil.
The work continues because the promise remains: every servicemember comes home, even if it takes 85 years and the people who loved them are no longer alive to open the door.