Marine's Casket Borne to Dallas
Six white-gloved Marines carried a casket through the bright tunnels at Union Terminal Sunday.
The body of Pfc. John C. Colonna of 615 Liberty Street, Dallas, was in the flag-draped casket.
A Marine gunnery sergeant named Lawrence O'Malley cleared the way through gay Sunday train crowds.
"What are the men carrying, Daddy?" asked a little girl.
Colonna's pretty sister, Mrs. D. E. (Mary) Davis, followed, crying.
Johnnie Colonna, 23, and already the owner of a Purple Heart with two gold stars, left a good job last summer to go back to the Marine Corps. The former Crozier Technical athlete died last September in a frontal assault on a Communist-held mountain in Korea.
Colonna was the first of the Marine dead to reach the United States from Korea under a new reburial program.
Gunnery Sergeant O'Malley escorted the body here from San Francisco. O'Malley, who won a Purple Heart at Iwo Jima, is a Marine who wears a black band on his sleeve most of the time. Since 1947 he has been escorting the bodies of dead Marines back to their home towns.
"The saddest duty in all the Marine Corps," said the man who goes to three or four military funerals every month.
Services for Johnnie Colonna will be at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Weiland-Merritt Funeral Church at 2909 Live Oak. Navy Chaplain Paul F. Bobb will be in charge of services. Burial will be in Grove Hill Cemetery.
His other survivors are his father, Joe C. Colonna; two brothers, Billy (William Fred) Colonna and Joe Colonna Jr., all of Dallas; and two other sisters, Mrs. Pete (Mildred) Payne of Hearne, and Mrs. Calvin C. (Geneva Mae) Porter of Grand Prairie.
Colonna was wounded twice in the Pelelieu invasion, one of the most savage operations of World War II, but he lived to fight all through the Okinawa campaign.
He was with the 1st Marine Division on Pelelieu. He was still fighting with the 1st Division when he died on that Korean mountain.
Colonna's pall bearers Tuesday will be Master Sergeants Peter Butz, Daniel Bowman and Herbert McQueen; Technical Sergeants Harry Polete and John Linyard, and Staff Sgt. Holon Wright.
And standing by the grave will be Sergeant O'Malley, the man with "the saddest duty in all the Marine Corps."
- Dallas Morning News
April 2, 1951
Six white-gloved Marines carried a casket through the bright tunnels at Union Terminal Sunday.
The body of Pfc. John C. Colonna of 615 Liberty Street, Dallas, was in the flag-draped casket.
A Marine gunnery sergeant named Lawrence O'Malley cleared the way through gay Sunday train crowds.
"What are the men carrying, Daddy?" asked a little girl.
Colonna's pretty sister, Mrs. D. E. (Mary) Davis, followed, crying.
Johnnie Colonna, 23, and already the owner of a Purple Heart with two gold stars, left a good job last summer to go back to the Marine Corps. The former Crozier Technical athlete died last September in a frontal assault on a Communist-held mountain in Korea.
Colonna was the first of the Marine dead to reach the United States from Korea under a new reburial program.
Gunnery Sergeant O'Malley escorted the body here from San Francisco. O'Malley, who won a Purple Heart at Iwo Jima, is a Marine who wears a black band on his sleeve most of the time. Since 1947 he has been escorting the bodies of dead Marines back to their home towns.
"The saddest duty in all the Marine Corps," said the man who goes to three or four military funerals every month.
Services for Johnnie Colonna will be at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Weiland-Merritt Funeral Church at 2909 Live Oak. Navy Chaplain Paul F. Bobb will be in charge of services. Burial will be in Grove Hill Cemetery.
His other survivors are his father, Joe C. Colonna; two brothers, Billy (William Fred) Colonna and Joe Colonna Jr., all of Dallas; and two other sisters, Mrs. Pete (Mildred) Payne of Hearne, and Mrs. Calvin C. (Geneva Mae) Porter of Grand Prairie.
Colonna was wounded twice in the Pelelieu invasion, one of the most savage operations of World War II, but he lived to fight all through the Okinawa campaign.
He was with the 1st Marine Division on Pelelieu. He was still fighting with the 1st Division when he died on that Korean mountain.
Colonna's pall bearers Tuesday will be Master Sergeants Peter Butz, Daniel Bowman and Herbert McQueen; Technical Sergeants Harry Polete and John Linyard, and Staff Sgt. Holon Wright.
And standing by the grave will be Sergeant O'Malley, the man with "the saddest duty in all the Marine Corps."
- Dallas Morning News
April 2, 1951
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