The remains of 1st Lt. Louis Girard will soon make their way home to his family and be interred in West, nearly 79 years after he was lost in battle during World War II, but not too late to give peace of mind for surviving family members.
Girard and his U.S. Army Air Force crew on his B-24 bomber reportedly crashed in Romania during an Allied bombing raid against Axis oil fields near the city of Ploiesti in August 1943, according to records from the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing-in-Action Accounting Agency.
The War Department declared Girard dead in fall 1943. The McLennan County native was 20 years old.
Girard’s family has never been entirely sure where he was buried. They will soon get the opportunity to inter his remains near other family members at West Cemetery, thanks to the Defense Department agency that works to recover POWs and MIAs. The interment date has not yet been set.
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Girard’s last surviving sibling, Helen Girard Pomykal, lives with her husband of over six decades, Bud Pomykal, in Rosebud.
“This will finally give Helen closure,” Bud said in a recent interview. “Helen and I went to high school together and I’ve been hearing about Louis since we got married in 1956.”
Girard served in the U.S. Army Air Forces, which would remain under the Army until 1947, when President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act, which established the U.S. Air Force as an independent service.
In later years, the Department of Defense contacted Helen as it reviewed remains that had been recovered of unknown air crews who had died during that World War II bombing raid on Poliesti.
Ultimately, the agency requested DNA samples from Helen and a sister of hers and Girard’s who was still alive at the time.
“It must have been three years ago now that I gave a DNA sample,” Helen said.
Laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established an association between one set of these unknown remains and 1st Lt. Girard, a document from the agency states.
Helen Pomykal said the family is eager to have her brother buried in the family plot.
“It’s just a miracle,” she said. “(All of his) nieces and nephews are so excited.”
Bud said that Girard’s remains were at military base in Nebraska and would soon be sent to Texas for burial.
Helen and Bud’s son-in-law, David Clay, related the story of how Girard joined military to fight the Nazis during World War II.
“He left Texas A&M and hitchhiked to Canada to join the Royal Canadian Air Force,” Clay said.
An article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram from shortly after Girard’s parents received notice of his death and information from the POW/MIA agency confirms Clay’s account.
Girard enlisted in the RCAF around February 1941, after the U.S. Army Air Forces declined him because he was too young at age 19, according to the article. He completed his pilot training in November that year and became a night fighter pilot, the article states.
Helen and Bud have a portrait photo of Girard in his Canadian uniform.
Eventually, Girard transferred from the Royal Canadian Air Force to the U.S. Army Air Forces and became a co-pilot with a B-24 Liberator bomber crew operating out of North Africa, Clay said.
In the raid on Poliesti, military records show that 177 B-24 bombers flew from North Africa including Girard’s. The Star-Telegram article states that hundreds of air crew personnel died in the raid. Records show Girard’s bomber crashed and he died along with all of his crewmates.
In the 1960s, the oldest brother of Helen and Louis visited an Allied cemetery in Italy where Girard was thought to have been buried, but the family was never entirely certain he was there, Helen said. Girard’s name was listed among the unknowns.
On March 28, 2022, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency completed identification of Girard’s remains. In April, the agency provided Helen a book with all the documentation compiled on Girard’s life, death and how they identified him.
When the military sends Girard’s remains and Helen’s family inters him with the family in West, she can at last have closure on the life and sacrifice of her brother.