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| Lt. Milferd earned the Silver Star on his 24th birthday while serving as a pilot with the 7th Bombardment Group. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/113226905/milferd-elmo-boesker/photo http://www.7thbg.org/7th-bg-historical-foundations-goal/ |
Milferd Elmo Boesker never had a chance to reach 100 years old today. Instead, he sacrificed his life for our freedom.
Milferd was born on June 27, 1920 in Kansas. His parents Edward and Emma were also both born in Kansas. His father worked as a farmer. Milferd had two younger brothers. By 1940 Milferd had completed high school and was working as a farm laborer and still living at home.
He joined the Army Air Forces in October 1941. He had the rank of first lieutenant in the 492nd Bombardment Squadron, 7th Bombardment Group, 10th Air Force which was equipped with B-24 Liberators. The 7th BG was sent to India in March 1942 and flew bombing missions to Burma. Lt. Boesker joined his squadron at a later date, but he served long enough to fly over 100 missions.
One his twenty-fourth birthday, June 27, 1944, Lt. Boesker was piloting B24 42-73189 on a dangerous mission to fly a cargo of gasoline from Kurmitola, India to Kunming, China. The flights over the Himalaya Mountains were difficult for planes of that period to fly, especially when full of cargo. During the flight, one of the engines failed and there was a fuel leak inside the plane. Lt. Boesker stayed at the controls long enough to give his crew the best chance of surviving and order everyone to bail out. Three men survived, but Lt. Boesker and two others were killed. Lt. Boesker was posthumously awarded the Silver Cross for his bravery.
His grave is at Immanuel Luther Church Cemetery in Canton, Kansas. His gravestone is misspelled as Milford.
This is one of the final 100 stories (68) to be written as part of this project which ends on September 2, 2020, the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. At that time more than 1,370 men and women will have been profiled. The project will live on in an expanded program to write the stories of all 400,000+ US World War II fallen. Visit www.storiesbehindthestars.org to learn more. We welcome your continued support and interest and encourage you to help write some of these stories.
Last year on this date I profiled Operation Torch fallen Ralph Mehring, 1st Infantry Division who was killed by the Vichy French. You can read about Ralph here.
On behalf of the fallen, if you would like to see more people become aware of this project to honor the WW2 fallen, be sure to share with others on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Thanks for your interest!
I created this video to explain why I started this project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXt8QA481lY.
Please consider joining the public Facebook group to increase the exposure of this project. Go to: WW2 Fallen 100
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