The Pilot Who Came Home
This story is shared in honor of Captain Ellis Spear Middleton II and his daughter, Hart Asbury, whose memory keeps his story alive.
I met her on a walking track.
It was just another morning—people circling, getting their steps in, doing what we all try to do… stay healthy a little longer. She was walking with a friend, smiling, easy to talk to. Her name was Hart Asbury.
We started talking like people do—nothing heavy at first. But somewhere along the way, she mentioned her father. He had been a pilot in World War II.
Then she said something that stopped me.
He never came home.
His name was Captain Ellis Spear Middleton II.
He was born on December 1, 1919, in Washington, D.C., and became a fighter pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces. He flew a P-47 Thunderbolt—one of the most rugged aircraft of the war—and was a decorated pilot, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal, and later the Purple Heart.
By September 1944, he was flying missions in support of Operation Market Garden—a massive Allied effort to push into the Netherlands and bring the war to a quicker end. It was a high-risk operation, and the skies were heavily contested.
His final mission
- Date: 23 September 1944
- Captain Middleton flew a combat mission supporting the airborne landings near Arnhem, Netherlands.
- He was flying a P-47 Thunderbolt (serial number 42-26525).
- His aircraft failed to return from the mission, and he was officially listed as Missing in Action (MIA).
He was 25 years old.
At the time, there was no confirmed crash site, no final message, and no grave—just a telegram and then silence.
For most families, that would have been the end of it.
But not for his.
Even before the war was over, his father began searching. He refused to accept that his son had simply disappeared. What followed became a mission of its own—one driven not by orders, but by determination.
He printed and distributed more than 30,000 circulars across Europe, each carrying his son’s photograph. They were sent to towns, posted in train stations, handed to officials—anywhere someone might recognize a face or remember a moment.
Thousands of these pamphlets have been distributed in the area (Holland/German border near Kleve) in the hope that someone would remember something. Word came from a German forest ranger named Karl Reimer who had witnessed an American plane crash in September 1944 in the Reichswald in western Germany. He also described how the pilot was buried by paratroopers who placed a coarse birchwood cross over the grave. Soon after, he was evacuated from the area due to increased war fighting. Many months after he returned, he was surprised to see the cross replaced by a sign reading “Unknown German Soldier”.
A Dutch railway official alone helped place thousands of them where travelers would see them.
Then he waited.
And slowly, the responses began to come in.
Letters arrived from across Europe—hundreds of them—from people offering help, sharing fragments of memory, trying to piece together what had happened to an American pilot who had fallen from the sky.
One of those responses changed everything.
In a forest near Kleve, a German ranger named Karl Riemer had seen the crash. He told investigators that the pilot had been buried by German paratroopers, who placed a crude birch cross over the grave.
These weren’t soldiers or officials. Many were ordinary people—farmers, workers, families—who had seen something during the war and never forgotten it.
When they located the site, they found it—but not as they expected.
The grave was marked as an “unknown German soldier,” in an isolated cemetery far from where anyone would have thought to look.
The grave was opened and examined.
Discovery of his grave
According to records and memorial listings:
- A grave believed to be that of an unknown German soldier was eventually investigated.
- When the body was exhumed, identification confirmed it was Captain Middleton.
- His remains were returned to the United States and buried with honor at Arlington National Cemetery.
The remains, along with evidence found at the site and nearby wreckage, confirmed the truth.
The unknown soldier was not German.
He was Captain Ellis Spear Middleton II.
After nearly three years, his family finally had their answer.
The search didn’t just bring one answer.
In the process, it helped identify the remains of six to eight other missing American soldiers, giving their families the same closure his family had fought so hard to find.
He was first laid to rest in a U.S. military cemetery in Belgium before finally being brought home to the United States.
He rests today at Arlington National Cemetery, properly identified, properly honored.
Not missing.
Not unknown.
Found.
