Inspired by his fatherâs WWII experience, Belfast stonemason repairs Maine POW/MIA memorialÂ
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BELFAST, Maine (Tribune News Service) â Belfast mason Dan Ladd didn t think twice about volunteering his time to fix a century-old concrete monument on the east side of Belfast that will be rededicated this week to prisoners of war and those who are missing in action.
That s because his father, a radio gunner in the Army Air Corps in World War II, spent a year and a half in a German POW camp after his B-17 was shot out of the sky.
In 1945, as the war was winding down, Tech Sergeant John Henry Ladd was liberated by the United States Army. After more than a year of hunger and privation, the 21-year-old came home bone thin â but he came home.