WELD – One of Rumford’s native sons is coming home this week, 64 years after he was listed as missing in action in World War II’s Pacific Theater Operation on an island off Papua New Guinea.

Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. William Alfred Bujold, who served as navigator with a crew of 11 on a B-17E Flying Fortress with the 64th Bomb Squadron, 43rd Bomb Group, died in combat on May 21, 1943. The plane was shot down during a bombing run on a Japanese air base on Rabaul, New Britain Province.

Bujold, the fourth and youngest son of Charles and Annie Bujold of 237 Penobscot St., will be given a military funeral starting at 10:30 a.m. Friday, Aug. 24, at his parents’ grave in St. John’s Catholic Cemetery off Isthmus Road in Rumford.

For brother and sister Joe and Madeline Bujold of Weld, and Joe’s wife Lee, “Uncle Al’s” ceremony and burial will be an emotional experience.

“We were the family’s only niece and nephew. I remember my mother saying that’s why he came” to visit them, to say goodbye, Madeline Bujold said Friday morning sitting beside her brother and his wife at their Weld Lake camp. When they last saw Uncle Al, Madeline was 4 and Joe, 5.

“I remember him reading the Sunday comics to me on the living room floor and I can still see ‘The Phantom’ strip and that’s my last recollection of him,” she added.

After graduating from Stephens High School in Rumford in the Class of 1936, going off to college and graduating with a degree in accounting, Alfred Bujold was inducted into the Army on Jan.16, 1942.

“My last memory of him was when he was being shipped overseas,” Joe Bujold said. “There was a tremendous closeness of my father (Ed) to his youngest brother. He would talk about the war to me.”

On Dec. 12, 1942, Alfred Bujold graduated from the Air Force Advanced Flying School at Mather Field, Calif., and immediately left for the war zone, but not before writing and mailing a short note on the back of his graduation announcement to his parents: “I think we are going across immediately. Sorry I couldn’t write. These last weeks have been terrible. Best regards. Goodbye and say a prayer for me. I’ll need it.”

On May 3, 1943, Alfred wrote to Ed Bujold, telling him about his fifth bombing mission the day prior. He also sent a photograph taken on May 6, 1943, of himself and 54 other officers from the squadron, whom he meticulously identified on the back.

Twenty-five days later, he was dead at the age of 24.

According to Joe and Lee Bujold’s daughter, Nolle Bujold Pollock of North Berwick, her great uncle’s plane and another B-17E on the same run were downed by Lt. Shigetoshi Kudo, one of the first Pacific night-fighter aces.

Intrigued by family stories, the Bujolds researched Alfred’s short life and gathered his meager WWII memorabilia, but have yet to find the Purple Heart awarded to him posthumously on Sept. 12, 1951.

After Alfred Bujold was listed as missing in action, his mother had his name engraved on her tombstone, anticipating he’d eventually be found. She died in 1944 of a broken heart, according to family lore, two years before her son was officially declared dead on Jan. 8, 1946.

On Dec. 17, 1947, an Army search team located wreckage of Bujold’s B-17, which crashed into a mountainside near the Warangoi River 25 miles southeast of Rabaul. Remains of all but four – who had parachuted out, were captured and executed at a Japanese POW camp – were recovered, but not identified individually.

In September 1951, those remains were buried at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis.

“As far as we were concerned, the group interment was the end of it,” Joe Bujold said.

But, it wasn’t. The Army refused to give up.

In 2000, they got a shocker of a phone call at their then Vermont home. Army teams had recovered more remains and were working with DNA to individually account for each of the seven.

On Nov. 27, 2006, Alfred Bujold was finally identified. He would be coming home. Initially, Joe wanted to hold a small private ceremony. His daughter convinced him otherwise.

“This represents closure for one man of the Greatest Generation that served our country and, it will allow veterans to show respect to one of their own,” Pollock said.

“This is about others, the veterans and this community. This is about the end of America’s Greatest Generation. It’s about Maine, the military and their concept, ‘No one left behind,'” Joe Bujold said.

“It’s about a guy who went off to war and, at the age of 24, made the ultimate sacrifice for his country,” Lee Bujold added.

Several veterans from across Maine and staff from Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are expected to attend Friday’s ceremony.

“We’re very, very grateful to the military. No one left behind; that gives hope to the families of people still missing,” Lee Bujold added

What: Procession and military funeral for repatriated remains of World War II Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. William Alfred Bujold

When and where: 9:30 a.m. at Wiles Funeral Home on Weld Street in Dixfield and 10:30 a.m. at St. John’s Catholic Cemetery off Isthmus Road in Rumford, on Friday, Aug. 24