Taylor WWII soldier returns home 80 years after dying in action [Video]

TAYLOR, Texas – A gun salute was the final send-off for Leroy Cloud as he ended his long journey home.

“I think closure for a lot of unanswered unknowns, whether somebody goes missing, you always wonder where they are,” said JB Cloud, Leroy’s great nephew.

Leroy Cloud was an Army sergeant from Thrall.

In 1944, while fighting in France during WWII, the 24-year-old’s tank was hit by a German shoulder-fired rocket.

The military wrote to his family with plans to bury him in an American cemetery, but it couldn’t share the location quite yet.

Six years later, the military deemed his remains unrecoverable.

All that changed just a few years ago.

“My eyes were wide because I’m seeing copies, colored scans of telegrams of the notice of death, letters from my great-grandparents asking ‘where is our son?'” said Cloud.

A historian with the military exhumed Cloud’s body for DNA testing. He found a positive match with his great nephew, JB Cloud.

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