The Old Blog in the Desert

It ain’t every day a man takes a long journey home, least of all one that lasts eighty-one years, crosses oceans, outlasts empires, and waits patiently in the soil of another man’s country. But such is the tale of 2nd Lieutenant Robert D. McKee, late of Portland, Ore., and the U.S. Army Air Forces, who has finally returned to American ground after a journey no less epic than Homer’s Odysseus—though with considerably fewer sirens and somewhat more red tape.

Lt. McKee, a spry young fella of 27, met his end on April 8th, 1944, when the B-24H Liberator known as Little Joe was plucked from the sky by enemy fire over Germany. That plane had wings like a steel barn and the temperament of a mule, but she flew nonetheless—until she didn’t. They were on a bombing mission, as so many brave boys were in those days, fighting in a war that seemed to stretch across the very firmament of the earth.

The War Department, in all its stiff-collared efficiency, sent word back to McKee’s kin in Portland. That telegram, likely delivered by some poor Western Union boy in a cap two sizes too big for his head, would be the last clear news they got for a long while.

Now, after the war, you’d think it’d be simple to return a man home. But no—half of Germany fell under Soviet hands, and let’s say the Russians didn’t go out of their way to help us find our lost boys. So McKee stayed where he fell, resting beneath foreign fields while the world spun on.

Fast forward to 2015—when an independent research outfit, likely staffed by tenacious folks who wear out their boots and drink too much black coffee, got wind of a wartime crash near Wistedt. They reached out to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, a group whose entire mission is to bring missing Americans home, one soldier at a time.

Turns out more than 81,000 American service members still haven’t made it back from various wars. That’s a population the size of a small city scattered across the world’s battlefields.

DPAA sent folks over to poke around and ask questions. One local soul—perhaps a farmer, once a boy—recalled seeing a plane tumble out of the sky and land like a broken promise in a nearby field. By 2021, they found fragments belonging to the tail gunner of Little Joe, and in 2023, after careful digging and respectful silence, they uncovered skeletal remains.

DNA can’t lie, and by 2024, the verdict came back sure as sunrise–it was Lt. Robert D. McKee. His DNA matched a maternal cousin, and word soon spread that his family still lived in Las Vegas and Arizona.

Blood, it seems, travels well and remembers its kin.

On a sunlit Friday—one of those Nevada mornings where the sky is bluer than a gambler’s dreams—McKee was laid to rest at the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City. He didn’t arrive alone.

Fellow veterans, family, and folks who understand sacrifice were there to greet him, along with the Nevada Army National Guard. The Chaplain, one Emmanuel Barba, said the ceremony wasn’t just for McKee but for the family left with too many unanswered questions for too many decades.

“To live a life with years of the unknown is unimaginable,” said Barba. “For them to know exactly what happened, to honor him the correct way—that’s so important.”

There was a flyover, with one of those sleek Lakota UH-72 birds flanked by old warplanes that likely hadn’t seen service since Roosevelt was in office.

A tri-folded flag, presented, as is tradition—symbolic of a grateful nation.

The Army has now rightly awarded Lt. McKee a raft of medals, including a Purple Heart, the Air Medal, and the kind of honors that sparkle like sunlight off polished brass–the World War II Victory Medal, American Campaign Medal, Pilot Wings, and others that speak to courage in the face of the impossible.

And so, after eight decades, across the collapse of nations and the passage of generations, Lt. McKee is home at last. The road may have been long, but what counts is the destination.

Rest easy, Lieutenant. Your mission is complete.