Albert Forgue, of North Providence, was shot down over Germany in World War II.

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Family photo

NORTH PROVIDENCE — Florence Leal recalls the first time she saw her father cry.

It was Dec. 29, 1944, after she saw Mr. Gilson, the local pharmacist in Centredale, come up the street to deliver a telegram.

Even before the pharmacist reached the Forgue residence at 22 Aldrich St., Florence, then 15, sensed there might be some bad news. All three of her older brothers, Francis, Walter and Albert Forgue, were serving in World War II . Her oldest brothers, Francis and Walter, were with the Marines in the South Pacific, and her youngest brother, Albert, 20, was a U.S. Army Air Force sergeant and a gunner on a plane that was making bombing runs over Germany.

“My father went to get the telegram, but never came up,” says Florence. “That’s when I went down and saw him at the bottom of the stairs crying.”

The telegram from the Department of War said that Albert and two other men were on a plane that had been shot down near Wollseifen, Germany, on Dec. 12, and that they had been missing since. Later, the family would learn that the A-20J Havoc aircraft that had flown out of Coulommiers, France, was last seen entering a steep dive near Cologne, Germany.

Florence, now 78, says the news was devastating for everyone in the family. “But what else could we do except go on with our lives.”

One year after his disappearance, the Department of War declared Albert dead and a funeral was held at St. Lawrence Church in Centredale.

Now there is news that Albert’s remains and those of the two other men on that fateful mission — 2nd Lt. John F. Lubben of Wisconsin and gunner Sgt. Charles L. Spiegel of Illinois — have been positively identified.

Unbeknownst to the family at the time, a German company that had been clearing mines and unexposed ordinance came upon a shallow grave in 1975 containing the bodies of several unidentified Americans, in the woods near Simmerath, Germany. Upon the discovery, the remains were sent to be reburied along with other unknowns in the Ardennes American Military Cemetery in Neupré, Belgium.

Florence and her daughter, Victoria Frezza, say the first time they knew there was a possibility that Albert’s remains had been found was when Maford Klein, a German soldier on a private mission to find and identify Americans who had been declared missing in action, reported in 2001 that his MIA group had recovered a parachute and pieces of the airplane similar to the one shot down in 1944.

Based on that report, the Department of Defense’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command ordered that the bodies of the three unknown servicemen be exhumed.

The link to crew members was still viewed as circumstantial until scientists from the JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory examined the forensic records and found that the DNA from one crew member showed a strong match to DNA taken from Florence Leal and to her daughter.

It was one more victory of sorts for the JPAC, which has been able to identify about 75 remains a year of the 88,000 American servicemen who have been declared missing in 20th-century conflicts.

Leal and her daughter say they were told about the match in January 2006, but only recently was it decided that the bodies would be brought back for another burial.

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, who said he was informed about the identification just yesterday, said plans are in place to have Forgue and fellow gunner Spiegel to be buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery on April 18.

Lubben, the pilot, has already been reburied at his hometown in Wisconsin.

Florence says her brother was an easygoing teenager who, maybe because he was a few years older, liked to “boss me around.”

“He was very handy and could fix anything,” she says with a smile. He didn’t much care for school and quit North Providence High before graduation to work at the Greystone Mill and as a truck driver for Centredale Lumber. Unlike his two brothers, who had volunteered for the Marines, Albert waited until he turned 18 and then registered for the draft. He entered the service in February 1943.

Julie Forgue, a former director of Public Works in East Providence and now director of utilities in Newport, is also one of Albert Forgue’s nieces. She said yesterday that everyone in the family knew of the uncle who was missing in action in World War II, but that except for her aunt, no one had seen him in person. She said everyone is planning to go to Arlington for the ceremony.

“I think it’s awesome that after all these years they are going to bring him home,” she said.