Chapter 4 - WHERE FROM HERE?

Some months passed and Graham had been actively engaged in the search for Hoenshell's crash site. Upon hearing the news of its successful location on a farm in Bulgaria, Jim's memory was jogged regarding Diana Dale's search for her uncle. He emailed a short query to Diana asking if she had been successful in extracting any information from CIL as to where the ID bracelet was. He told her that since last contacting her in April, that the search for Carl Hoenshell's crash site in Bulgaria had been very successful in that the U.S. Army mortuary affairs team had actually found Hoenshell's ID bracelet when they excavated the site. There are some successes! Intuition plays a prominent role in these searches for aircraft lost & forgotten for decades. Jim's query to Diana was very timely. The next day Diana responded that 'ESP lives!' She had just realized that it had been six months since she had queried CIL about the bracelet and her uncle's remains and had just sent off another letter to the CIL Director asking for an update. She had also been pondering the mystery of how & why her uncle's fragmentary remains & bracelet had been deposited at the Greisheim mausoleum as stated in the Individual Deceased Personnel File (IDPF). Where was Greisheim? Would they have any records on him? Jim had been corresponding with a young German air war researcher, Roland Geiger, whom he believed might shed some light on the subject. He informed Diana and and let Roland know of the Wisner trail through Greisheim.

December 8, 1999

Dear Jim, Thank you for your follow-up. The ID bracelet is somewhere back here in the U.S. military system, but I don't know where yet. It was mentioned in conjunction with remains assumed to be my uncle's that were interred in an unknown crypt or grave at the Griesheim mausoleum. I'm assuming that because of the ID bracelet, they re-designated the remains from an UNK number to a CIL number, and I'm pretty sure they moved them at that time. I'm less concerned about the bracelet than I am about the current whereabouts of the remains. In 1948 they couldn't positively identify them, but with today's DNA technology they can, and that's what I'm after. I'll contact your friend Roland directly tomorrow with the exact information in the IDPF file that points to Griesheim. Perhaps he can find out why Griesheim is even mentioned (my uncle was supposed to have gone down over Bolzano), and where the remains were relocated. I finally got a response to my six-month follow-up letter to CIL, but it said merely that nothing further has been ascertained, so far. I'll keep you posted if I learn anything.

Thanks, Diana --------------------------------------------

The relative vacuum forthcoming from CIL was broken the next week.

December 14,1999

Jim, you're going to get so tired of hearing from me, but I got home last night to find a letter from Johnie Webb at CIL. Here's what it said: "This is an update to our letter of November 8, 1999, concerning your uncle, Second Lieutenant William O. Wisner, SN: 0-708778. We have received and reviewed the Individual Deceased (293) File for Unknowns buried in the Griesheim Main Mausoleum (numbers from X#70000 - 70099). Within this file are Quartermaster Corps (QMC) Form 357s "Reclassification Sheet" indicating unknown remains that were later identified. For the remains designated as Unknown X-70035, there was no positive identification. The 'New Classification' was given as '293 Unk. Grisheim Maus Cil 5034'. A copy of this form is enclosed. "We did receive a reply to our request for the CIL 5034 file from the Washington National Records Center (WNRC) in Suitland, Maryland. Unfortunately the CIL 5034 file is 'missing'. Without this file to review, we are unable to answer the questions in your letter of April 27, 1999, concerning the location of the remains designated Unknown X-70035, then later assigned CIL 5034, or the final disposition of the bracelet. "Unless the CIL 5034 file can be reviewed, we are unable to provide you with factual data on the information you seek. If additional information is received concerning your questions, we will notify you..."

Jim, where do I go from here? Is there a next step I can take? Anyone who knows me knows I don't give up easily, and to have come this close to finding anything that might be associated with Bill makes me even more determined. It's so much more than his family ever knew existed. The form 357 is completely useless and tells me nothing I didn't already know. What causes a file to be "missing"? Does this mean there are no other avenues I can pursue? I'm hoping that the IDPF on the other pilot who went down with Bill will shed some light, but the chances of that are remote at best. But right now, it's all I've got to go on. I doubt if Roland will turn up anything more. It feels like such a dead end, and I'm so depressed about it, I don't quite know what to do. Of all the possible outcomes, this is the last one I expected. I keep seeing the closing scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," where the Ark of the Covenant is packed in a crate and wheeled into a U.S. Government warehouse containing hundreds of thousands of crates exactly the same size and shape... I'm sure Bill's "missing" file is in a warehouse somewhere -- misplaced, but somewhere.

Thanks, Jim, for listening, and again for all your help and support.

Diana --------------------------------------