FRANKFORT, Ind. — It was rainy in Frankfort the day Pfc. Clossie Brown was buried for the second time. The ground was frozen when he died.
His granddaughter Roslyn Clendenning, initially wanted to bury him in Arlington National Cemetery, but was told they don’t take caskets anymore. She went to check out a family plot instead, just off the side of the highway toward Michigantown, Indiana.
When she went to scout a location next to his mother’s and brothers’ remains, she could have sworn she heard the wind carry a “thank you.” The Army officer who accompanied her swore he heard something, too.
Brown was 36 when he died in Reipertswiller, France, during World War II. It was Jan. 21, 1945.
According to his best friend, who enlisted at the same time and survived the heavy fighting at Reipertswiller, he spent his final moments trying to take down a Nazi tank. His remains weren’t accounted for because Germans controlled the area when the dust settled.
Without remains or record of him being captured by Germans, the War Department issued a “Finding of Death” in January 1946. The same year, the American Graves Registration Command began searching for bodies in the Reipertswiller area.
The next year, on June 15, a French deming unit came across fragmented human remains and Pfc. Brown’s identification tag in Obermuhlthal forest, northeast of Reiperstwiller. Scientists at the time weren’t able to positively identify the remains, though. Instead, they were labeled X-5723 Neuville and interred at the U.S. Military Cemetery at St. Avold, France, which now goes by the name of Lorraine American Cemetery.
Who was Pfc. Clossie Brown?
Pfc. Brown was born Sept. 24, 1908, in Kirklin, Indiana.
He had three siblings and married Mildred Irene Cline. Brown and his wife had two children, Barbara Joan Heaton and David Lee Brown. He worked at the Ingram-Richardson company before enlisting and entered the U.S. Army at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, on April 8, 1944.
Clendenning has always wondered why he joined at the age of 35.
Although she never met him, she thinks her grandfather knew he was headed toward danger. He bought his wife a dinette set before leaving. The table and chairs now populate his granddaughter’s Kokomo dining room.
She also has a copy of the last photo taken of him — the faded family portrait shows him smiling in uniform. His young son sat on his knee. His wife and daughter look happy.
Brown’s niece Norma Stowers is among the select few still around who ever met him.
They were never incredibly close. Stowers was 9 when she met him and primarily remembers him as a stocky man who looked like the photos family kept of him. Her memories from the time period mostly involve blackouts, sirens and watching the sky for enemy planes.
Brown’s wife eventually remarried. Her second husband had also been a soldier in the Army who earned a Purple Heart and whose stepchildren called him “pop.” He became a veterinarian after the war.
“He was the sweetest, kindest man,” Clendenning said of the grandfather she grew up with. “He couldn’t step on a bug if you made him. He’d jump over it.”
Searching
Brown’s mother started writing letters to the government immediately after learning her son went missing. She kept writing until the day she died.
Clendenning still has the letters. She also has the Bible that Brown’s mother stuck in his duffel bag.
“She wanted his bones to be there before she passed,” Clendenning said. “I think if they’d given her a bag and a free trip there, she’d have looked until she died. I swear, I know she would have.”
As it turns out, according to Brown’s obituary, she would have had to visit two countries to secure his remains.
While a portion of Brown’s remains were interred in Lorraine American Cemetery in France, another portion of his remains, mistaken for a separate person, were placed in Ardennes American Cemetery in Belgium.
Brown’s remains stayed there until June 2021 and August 2022, when the Department of Defense and American Battle Monuments Commission exhumed remains from those cemeteries for forensic analysis.
Scientists were able to match mitochondrial DNA in the remains to Brown’s maternal cousins. The remains also matched anthropological and other circumstantial evidence.
Finally, after 80 years, Brown was found. All that remained of him were a few bones from his left leg and foot.
His name is listed with other WWII soldiers who are still unaccounted for on the Walls of the Missing at Epinal American Cemetery in Dinozé, France. A rosette will be placed next to his name to show he’s been found.
Clendenning’s daughter-in-law was the first to learn Brown had been identified.
The Department of Defense tried to contact Clendenning’s son Gunnery Sgt. Carl Steven Clendenning, but was off by one number. He was in the other room when his wife Ruby got the call.
Walking into Steven’s office, Ruby explained through tears that his great-grandfather’s remains had been found. By the time Steven called his mother, he was bawling, Roslyn Clendenning said.
“I was surprised,” Steven said. “I couldn’t even talk.”
At first, Clendenning said, she thought something awful had happened to Steven’s kids. It took a few moments for her to realize what was going on.
The emotional impact didn’t really hit her until she was at the cemetery picking a spot to lay his bones. All of a sudden, it occurred to her Brown and his mother would be at peace.
Initially, she thought about burying Brown next to his daughter. But the more she re-read letters from his mother, pleading to have her son’s body returned, Clendenning decided he should go next to her.
She knew what it was like to be a scared mother of an infantry member. When Steven was deployed in Iraq, his detachment went radio silent for two days after being attacked. Some didn’t survive.
“I know how it felt to sit at home for two days. I couldn’t even change my clothes or take a shower. I was afraid I’d miss a call,” Clendenning said days before the funeral.
Turning her attention back to Brown’s ceremony, she later added, “I just want it to be all good. Perfect. He deserves that.”
Finally at rest
Brown’s remains were flown into Indianapolis Airport on Sept. 20. A crowd lined the square in downtown Frankfort to watch as an escorted procession took them to Goodwin Funeral Home.
Four days later, on Brown’s birthday, a steady trickle of people filled the funeral home.
Brown’s casket contained an Army uniform filled with cardboard to make the suit look full. His bones were placed underneath the uniform, wrapped in green wool. Family members paid their respects before closing the casket and draping it with an American flag.
At least three generations of Brown’s family attended. Steven, who is a Marine, shaved off 20 years worth of beard growth for the funeral.
It had been approximately 79 years since Stowers, his niece, saw Brown. The excitement of finding out his remains had been identified landed her in the hospital for a short stint.
“In my life, I wished I could see this,” Stowers said. “It’s a joyful day and a sad day.”
Current members of the 157th Infantry Regiment, of which Brown was a member, came in from Colorado to pay their respects. A colonel from the regiment said it went on to liberate the Dachau concentration camp after Brown’s death.
The POW/MIA Indiana Chapter 1 took up a whole row of seats. The director of the Indiana Department of Veterans Affairs presented a declaration from Gov. Eric Holcomb that Brown was a Distinguished Hoosier.
Toward the back of the room, his Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Army Good Conduct Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, Combat Infantryman Badge and Honorable Service Lapel Button were displayed atop the funeral home’s piano.
The Honorary Consul of France for Indiana, Martin Baier, spoke during Brown’s eulogy.
“Today, France wishes to honor him as well as the memory of all those who have endured the war. This recognition comes as earlier this year, on June 6, we celebrated the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy,” Baier said.
He referenced French president Emmanuel Macron’s D-Day anniversary speech, later adding French people would never forget what they owe Americans.
“Let us never forget the lesson of courage and commitment given to us by our liberators, which enforces essential duty and must inspire us every day,” Baier translated. “These allies who came to die on our soil, on land that for some they had never set foot upon, for the freedom of friends and the values they shared with us.”
Steven also delivered a eulogy. He remembered coming home for the first time after Marine boot camp. The first person he wanted to see, other than his immediate family, was his grandmother.
“The hug that she gave me that day is a hug that’s forever etched in my body, my mind and my soul,” he told the crowd, blinking back tears. “It was my grandmother hugging her father who never got to come home.”
He turned to face Brown’s casket.
“You’re at peace now. I think we all are,” Steven said. “Welcome home, grandpa, and happy birthday in heaven.”
A short drive home
Gray clouds still sprinkled rain outside when Clendenning took one last private moment to speak to the remains of the grandfather she never met.
Quietly, with her hand on the casket, she told him, “You are home. You are home. You are home.”
Leaving the funeral home, Brown’s procession passed under a large American flag held up by fire truck ladders and headed toward Whiteman Cemetery.
Police and Patriot Guard riders escorted the procession. Drivers pulled to the side of the road so it wouldn’t have to stop at any traffic light or stop sign. Children from Clinton Central Elementary School stood outside to watch. Most of the kids held a hand over their heart. A few of the drivers got out of their vehicles and did the same.
Flags were planted everywhere in the cemetery.
Misshapen semicircles broke out near Brown’s final resting place to observe his last rites. His great-great-grandchildren sat close to the casket, next to Clendenning, and watched curiously as uniformed military members folded the flag that had been draped over Brown’s casket and gently handed it to their grandmother.
“I am very content,” Clendenning said after the ceremony. “He’s at peace. He’s with his mama, his brothers and his dad.”
The rain had let up before the procession reached the cemetery. Dark clouds parted to reveal a bright blue sky.
Howling gusts of wind whipped American flags while soldiers performed a three-volley salute and played taps.
Steadying her balance with a cane, Stowers snapped a few photos when the soldiers carried her uncle’s remains to his final resting place.
“My prayers are answered,” Stowers said. She didn’t take her eyes off the coffin. “I prayed all night long the weather would hold up.”