Almost 80 years after death, Liberal soldier returns home

Apr. 5—LIBERAL, Mo. — Eighty years ago today, Cpl. Julius Glenn Wolfe, 20, was training and preparing for what would become known as "the Longest Day."

Wolfe, a combat engineer, would be killed in a U.S. Army landing craft on June 6, 1944, as it approached Omaha Beach.

His small wooden craft, carrying 200 soldiers, first hit a mine, then was hit by an artillery shell that set off diesel fuel tanks below the compartment where Wolfe was standing with 23 of other engineers. All were incinerated.

On Friday, more than 100 family, friends and others filled a small cemetery on the east side of Liberal for Wolfe's funeral. His remains were identified in August 2023.

Karen Wolfe-Miller, daughter of Glenn Wolfe's younger brother, Lloyd Wolfe, said the fact that they were burying her uncle in the community where he grew up next to his parents two months before the 80th anniversary D-Day — and six months after what would have been his 100th birthday — was unfathomable just a few months ago.

"From what we knew of what happened that day, we thought his body was lost at sea and would never be found," Wolfe-Miller said. "When they started calling us wanting contact information for closest relatives, I said I'll give you the information but you're never going to find anything because he was lost at sea. The lady who called me said, 'You just never know, things are happening every day,' and it wasn't more than six weeks later that we got the notice that he'd been identified. I was just totally dumbfounded about this."

Julius Glenn Wolfe

Wolfe-Miller said her grandparents and Wolfe's parents, Julius and Gladys Wolfe, never really talked about Glenn Wolfe in family gatherings when they were alive.

It wasn't like it was a big secret, it was more like they had mourned and were moving on with their lives.

Wolfe-Miller's father, Lloyd Wolfe, was eight years younger than his older brother and died a few years ago.

Wolfe-Miller said she knows her uncle was born and went to grade school in Arcadia, Kansas, 9 miles northwest of Liberal. The family moved to Liberal at some point, and Glenn Wolfe attended Liberal High School, graduating in 1941.

"I know he hunted and fished with friends, but that's about as much as I could tell you," she said. "They could swim in the strip pits and hunt on the prairie."

He married Lois Essex in Liberal, but they divorced before Wolfe left for the war. He enlisted in the Army in early 1943 and ended up in an engineering battalion, learning how to clear explosive obstacles from beaches and other locations to allow infantry and tanks to advance on the battlefield.

He trained for months in southern England, living with a local family because of a lack of barracks in the region.

"I know he had a girlfriend in England who thought he was in love with her," Wolfe-Miller said. "She was quite in love with him by her letters. I know when he was over there training, the area where they were training off the coast of England, there were no barracks so the American soldiers stayed with the locals. One of his letters, he talks about the people he lived with failing to get them up and they almost missed roll call."

Wolfe-Miller said she has many of the letters he sent home to his parents and the letters his parents sent in return, but they don't reveal much detail.

The U.S. military censored mail sent to and from soldiers at the front to make sure they didn't give away the location where they were based and other information.

"The letters are pretty bland," Wolfe-Miller said. "Most were things like, 'I know I needed write you today and I can't think of anything else to say so I'm going to close.' The Army didn't let the soldiers tell where they were. If they tried to put information about where they were, it was redacted out of their letters to their mothers."

Funeral

The family, with the casket, a military escort and an escort by the Warriors Watch Riders, arrived at City Cemetery at around 11:25 a.m. for the 45-minute ceremony.

A stone honoring Wolfe had already been placed in the cemetery years ago on an empty plot to honor the fallen soldier next to the graves of his mother and father.

Wolfe-Miller said her uncle would be buried in that spot and engravings would be added to the stone to mark the date his remains were identified and when he was buried.

The funeral included a eulogy by an Army chaplain, a 21-gun salute and the traditional folding and presentation of the flag to the family.

Lt. Col. William Smith, director of Missouri Military Funeral Honors, said this final tribute is something soldiers earn through their service to their country.

"For the family, it shows their soldier didn't waste his time," Smith said. "The military and the country appreciates what he or she did and that's representative by what we just did today."