A hero's homecoming: Pittsburgh WWII serviceman, unknown for 80 years, laid to rest
Christine Bodnar placed a celebratory cigar at her father’s grave in Allegheny County Memorial Park in McCandless on Sunday.
After 82 years, his lost brother is home.
Tech. Sgt. Paul F. Eshelman Jr., a gunner on a World War II bomber, was shot down in Europe in August 1943. His parents, Paul and Alice Eshelman, weren’t at home when the news came that their 21-year-old, first-born son was missing in action. Their younger son, Richard, had to deliver that message to them.
“He said it was the hardest thing he ever had to do,” Bodnar said of her father’s task. He was a teenager at the time.
Eshelman was laid to rest Sunday with military honors in Allegheny County Memorial Park near the graves of his mother and his sister, Marian Derstine, and not far from those of his father and his younger brother.
They all died well before Eshelman’s remains were identified in 2023 and returned home.
A graduate of Perry High School in Pittsburgh’s North Side, Eshelman entered the military in May 1942 and went overseas in April 1943.
A technical sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Forces, Eshleman was a radio operator and gunner on a B-24 Liberator, named “Tagalong.” It was one of 177 that were sent on Aug. 1, 1943 to destroy oil fields and refineries in Romania that were producing oil for Germany and its allies.
Tagalong was one of 51 that did not return from Operation Tidal Wave. Of the 10-member crew, Eshelman was among five that were killed. The other five were taken prisoner.
Eshelman was among 189 Americans soldiers from the mission that Romanian citizens buried as unknowns. After the war, he remained among more than 80 that the American Graves Registration Command could not identify and reburied at cemeteries in Belgium.
In 2017, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency began exhuming unknowns believed to be associated with unaccounted-for airmen from Operation Tidal Wave. Eshelman was identified on Sept. 27, 2023, at an agency laboratory in Honolulu.
Bodnar said her father, who died in 2013, would be so happy that his brother is no longer missing.
“I think it’s a gift to our family,” said Bodnar, a Cranberry resident. “To know and to have that closure is a great gift.”
The children of Eshelman’s sister — Paul Derstine and Lesa Naughton — provided DNA samples to help identify his remains.
“I’m happy to finally be bringing him home,” said Naughton, who lives in Lexington, S.C. “I always heard stories about him growing up. My mom always spoke highly of him.”
While the family could have buried Eshelman at Arlington National Cemetery or any national cemetery, Naughton said she chose Allegheny County Memorial Park because his mother, who lived with her the last two years of her life before dying in 1987, would have wanted him there with family.
The loss of her son weighed on Alice Eshelman, Naughton said.
“She said she was never the same after he died. But I never knew her any differently,” Naughton said. “She would be so relieved.”
Before the burial, a public visitation was held at H.P. Brandt Funeral Home nearby in Ross. Katie O’Toole Greggs, of Cranberry, said it was important for her to come.
“I think it’s important to pay our respects to the generation that saved the world,” said Greggs, whose great uncle, Frank Rychcik, was killed in action in World War II. “All of our veterans are national treasures and they deserve to be treated as such.”
Most people at the burial service knew Eshelman only through stories and photos. But one person there knew him personally: Jean Bell, 96, of Cranberry. She was the best friend of his sister, Marian.
“He was always around,” Bell said of Eshelman. But because he was about six years older, “He didn’t pay much attention to us.”
But what Bell remembers of Eshelman were his looks.
“He was so good looking,” she said, adding that she doesn’t need photos. “I can picture him in my head.”
A photo shows Eshelman with a young woman. Paul Derstine said no one knows who she was. While he appears to be wearing a wedding band, Derstine said they don’t believe Eshelman was ever married, and he never had children.
Bodnar can’t help but think of the additional cousins they could have had if their uncle had survived the war and had a family of his own.
“I would’ve loved to know him,” she said. “I just feel like how much richer our lives could’ve been had he been in our lives.”
Brian C. Rittmeyer, a Pittsburgh native and graduate of Penn State University's Schreyer Honors College, has been with the Trib since December 2000. He can be reached at brittmeyer@triblive.com.
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