‘It’s a long-awaited homecoming’

Burial set for WWII airman from Port Deposit

John Elliott holds a picture of his father, Staff Sgt. John A. Tarbert, a WWII airman from Port Deposit whose remains are being returned to his family some 80 years later. JOHN ELLIOTT

It was a cruel twist of fate, John Allen Elliott agreed. On the day he was born — Oct. 13, 1944 — his mother learned that his father was a casualty of war.

Birthdays are bittersweet for Elliott, who turns 80 this month. He never knew his father, Staff Sgt. John Allen Tarbert, an American airman from Port Deposit in Cecil County who served during World War II.

Tarbert, 24, was a gunner on a B-24 bomber that was shot down over Germany by the Luftwaffe and crashed on Sept. 27, 1944. Six airmen bailed out of the plane and survived; Tarbert was one of three who didn’t. His 18th mission was his last.

Sixteen days later, his wife, Jenevieve Judd, 22, received the news that her husband of 11 months was missing in action. That same day, she gave birth to their son, John.

Now, a lifetime later, in May, Tarbert’s remains were finally identified by the military through DNA testing. He will be laid to rest with full military honors on Nov. 8 in Glenville, New York, near his son’s home.

That Elliott will celebrate his 80th birthday, with this closure, is a comfort, he said. “I’m a low-key kind of person, but this is getting exciting. It’s a long-awaited homecoming.”

Born in 1920, Tarbert attended The Tome School, in North East, Maryland, where he played football and studied art. (His son has a cherished pencil sketch of windmills that his father drew while in the Netherlands.) At 19, Tarbert joined the Army and met his wife-to-be while at Fort Lowry, an Army Air Forces training base in Virginia. They wed on Nov. 4, 1943, in the midst of World War II. Soon after, he was shipped overseas.

Posthumously, Tarbert received several military awards, including the Air Medal with Oak Leaf Clusters and the Purple Heart. Eight years later, his widow remarried to Edward Elliott, who adopted her son and gave the child his name.

“He was a wonderful guy who was really my dad,” Elliott said of his stepfather. Still, as time passed, the mystery of his birth father’s whereabouts gnawed at him.

By all accounts, Tarbert had been a deeply religious man; among Elliott’s other keepsakes is a prayer book that belonged to his father. Survivors of the crash recalled that Tarbert was on his knees, praying, near the end of that fateful mission of the 703rd Bomber Squadron.

“I’d love to know what he was praying about,” his son said. “Was he praying that, while the plane would crash, it wouldn’t explode? Was he praying for his crew members? For his family? For himself? Maybe he planned to [don] his parachute when he finished praying, only to have the plane crash sooner than he expected because his eyes were closed in prayer.

“The longer I think about it, the more possibilities there are. I figure I might ask him about it when I get to heaven. Or maybe I’ll just be happy to see him.”