EUGENE, Ore. (AP) – A CIA pilot killed in an ambush by Chinese communists 53 years ago has been buried in his mother’s grave, a year after military investigators found his remains and identified them.

Robert Snoddy was 31 when he was shot down on a clandestine mission in Manchuria in 1952.

A last wish of Snoddy’s mother was that no marker be placed on her grave until her son came home. A stone with the names of both mother and son will mark the long-delayed reunion.

“He’s home, and it’s not a time to be sad anymore,” Roberta Lee Cox, Snoddy’s daughter and only child, said following a funeral Friday.

Snoddy worked for the CIA, helping forces trying to unseat China’s communist government. On his last mission, Snoddy and fellow pilot Norman Schwartz were leading a night flight to pick up what they thought was an anti-communist operative in what was then Manchuria, near the North Korean border.

But the operative apparently was a double agent and alerted communist forces. They opened fire as Snoddy and Schwartz came in low over the pickup spot, and the two pilots died when the plane burst into flames and crashed.

Two CIA agents aboard as passengers survived and were held more than 20 years in Chinese prisons before being released.

One of them, John Downey, attended the funeral.

“It’s been a long time,” Downey said. “He was a great man and an outstanding flier.”

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