A missing WWII soldier from Denver was finally found thanks to niece's resolve

ARVADA, Colo. – Growing up, Barb Bernhardt didn’t know much about her uncle Harold. The little that was known about this important piece of her family’s history was for years stored inside a basement closet in her home.

“When I was growing up, the whole family spoke about Uncle Harold in hushed tones,” said Barb. “Anything that I heard about him was mostly things that I overheard as a child.”

What she was able to piece together about Harold Schafer’s short life jumped off the pages of poignant letters stored inside that closet.

She spread them out across the kitchen island, picking up one Barb’s mom wrote to her big brother Harold almost 80 years ago

“We miss you so much. That's all we talk about when we get together,” read Barb.

It was December 1, 1944.

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Barb’s mom – Harold’s sister - wrote about Denver’s first snowstorm of that season and the empty spot at the dinner table.

“We sure had a nice Thanksgiving dinner at mom's, but I don't think anyone really enjoyed it because we were wondering if you got a good meal,” Barb continued. “And my mom goes on to say he is one of the best brothers a girl could ever have. And it was just a sweet, adorable letter.”

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It was this letter, particularly what was stamped on the outside of the envelope, that has always stood out to Barb. As a young girl, she discovered it stored away in her mom’s desk. A letter that never made it to its destination and would go unanswered.

“I noticed that the address had been crossed out and he never received the letter. It was marked deceased,” said Barb. “And it was just heartbreaking to me even as a young child, I could understand how she must have felt. That was first how I got to know Harold in the beginning.”

As World War II raged on, Sgt. Harold Schafer was in the thick of it. It was the early 1940s and like so many others called to serve and save the world from Hitler’s tyranny - he left Denver for boot camp and was assigned to Company B, 1st Battalion, 357th Infantry Regiment of the 90th Infantry Division.

He, along with the 90th, eventually made their way to Utah Beach fighting all the way down the border of France.

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The little news family received back home came through the few letters Harold was able to send back to Colorado.

“In one of the letters, he does say this is really a terrible thing, killing each other. But I guess there will always be some wise guy that will want to rule the world and make trouble,” Barb read from one of Harold’s last letters. “He said I would give almost anything to be back home, enjoying the swell life we were having.”

Then the letters stopped and the Western Union telegrams arrived.

“Telling the family that he was missing, and then later on killed in action,” said Barb.

On December 6, 1944, Schafer crossed the Saar River and captured some ground near Dillingen, Germany. The 90th battled fierce German resistance and fought back counterattacks over the course of several days.

Four days later, on December 10, 1944 – Sgt. Harold Schafer, 28, was killed in action by German machine gun fire in the forest near Dillingen while moving to a new fighting position. Because of intense enemy fire, many heroes including Schafer couldn’t be recovered.

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Decade after decade, the family’s agony was never relieved as there was never an answer to what happened to Harold’s remains.

It was a crushing blow to Harold’s mom (Barb’s grandmother) shared by so many mothers during World War II who were left with little answers about the fate of their sons.

A piercing pain that jumps off the pages of letters Harold’s mom wrote to the government in search of answers.

“I've received no other word other than he was killed. Would you please let me know if you've ever found his remains or where he's been laid to rest,” Barb read from a 1946 letter.

Harold’s mom kept sending letters in search of any closure.

“Come to find out the military has been trying to locate him but he had no identification on him whatsoever. They really did try,” said Barb.

Years and years went by and there were still no answers.

“And someone sent the letter that said ‘we’re sorry, he has just not been able to be identified,” continued Barb. “So she had no idea where he was, was he still in the forest. For a mother, it’s just so hard and I can totally relate to how she felt.”

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The mystery of Harold’s whereabouts loomed over the family through the decades. Year after year, Barb would pass that basement closet and those letters until one day in 2016 when something just felt different.

“Okay, Harold, I'm going to give you a whole day of my time, and I'm going to get to know you,” said Barb. “So that day I got my computer and went into Germany on Google Earth and saw the river and the general forest area where he was killed.”

Her Google search mission led her to a Stars and Stripes article and the battlefield recovery work of a German man named Chris Seiwert. “She said my uncle is missing in action in Germany, could you please help me?” said Seiwert. “She said near Dillingham Germany and I said what? That's where I live. I was astonished.”

Seiwert, who lives a mile from where Barb’s uncle Harold was killed, grew up surrounded by the reminders of war.

“My parents always said don’t ever go in a bunker. It’s too dangerous and don’t ever touch anything you find. Tell that to 12 and 13 year old boys,” said Seiwert. “Even today, I still see bullet holes, shrapnel holes in the walls which could not be removed.”

Together with his childhood friend Peter Jung, Seiwert would search the woods only to discover helmets, bracelets and ID tags.

“And we found a German PFC in a zig zag trench and we started to think that this was not a game and that was no adventure. That was bloody war and people were killed,” said Seiwert,

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His boyhood curiosity turned into a life’s mission helping to make right the wrongs that happened in those woods.

In the 1990s, he formed a group of German volunteers, or the VBGO, who worked to find missing World War II soldiers from both sides. His group’s mission was featured in the Stars and Stripes article which led to the connection to Barb.

Turns out, the remains of the German soldier Seiwert discovered in the zig zag trench still had his ID tag. They were able to piece together that the soldier had a daughter and was classified as missing in action on December 7, 1944 – ironically just three days before Schafer was killed in the same area.

“He was killed I would say under 50 yards from where Schafer had been fighting,” added Seiwert.

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Seiwert’s German group has partnered with the Defense Pow / Mia Accounting Agency (DPAA) in the United States to track down missing service members including troops from the 94th Infantry Division who were fighting around 20 miles from where Seiwert lives.

“And they sent us files from two Americans who went missing there in the woods,” said Seiwert.

One was a soldier from Chicago and the other was a Seattle man born in 1917 whose parents were Japanese, according to his company commander whom Seiwert met in 1994.

“And he said he felt American and he volunteered for the Army,” said Seiwert.

It was while searching for these two missing American soldiers that Seiwert’s group found the remains of another U.S. soldier but without ID tags. “And we told DPAA and they came up and took him in a coffin to Nebraska and they found out it was not the guy who we were looking for,” added Seiwert.

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It was that search featured in the The Stars and Stripes article that Barb found online leading to the unlikely connection to Seiwert.

Adding he knows the woods “like the back of our hands”, Seiwert, using military after action reports from the DPAA, set out to find Sgt. Schafer.

“We knew about the area where B Company must have been, so we went out and got permission because you have to have permission to search,” said Seiwert.His group secures approvals from local government and police because of the inherent dangers involved in searching “because you always find unexploded stuff.”

They searched those woods four to five times but there was no sign of Sgt. Schafer’s remains.

“We searched the foxholes, the trenches, everything, we found a lot of helmets and guns, some guns and ammunition, but no remains nothing,” said Seiwert. “I was in contact with Barb and I said we tried, but I doubt that he’s there. He must have been removed, perhaps by the Germans.”

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He said it was common for German soldiers to take the bodies of Americans and bury them elsewhere.

While Seiwert’s efforts didn’t find an answer this time, back in Colorado, Barb’s determination was paying off when she connected with the work of the DPAA.

“Whose sole mission is to recover those still missing from our past wars and conflicts ranging from Operation Desert Storm, Vietnam, Korea and World War II,” said Sean Everette, DPAA Spokesperson. “The reason that we exist is because there are still more than 81,000 service members missing from all of these past wars and conflicts.”

As Schafer’s mom back in Colorado was desperate for any news on her son’s whereabouts, the American Graves Registration Command (AGRC) conducted several investigations between 1946 and 1950 in the Dillingen, Germany area but found nothing and he was declared non-recoverable in November of 1951.

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It would take another 67 years for the first major clue to surface.

The DPAA said a historian in 2018 focused on a set of remains that could be Schafer.

Turns out, Sgt. Harold Schafer’s unidentified remains were recovered in 1946 and placed at Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France.

Those remains were exhumed in August of 2021.

“We were given permission to disinter those remains and they were sent back to our lab,” said Everette.

Barb, who said she was a “little leary to give DNA to the military” submitted it anyway and waited until one day when her sister called.

“And she said are you sitting down? You’re not going to believe this and I’m like what,” said Barb, “And she said they found Uncle Harold and I was just like oh my gosh are you kidding me?”

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Officially listed as accounted for in September 2023, the first draft of Sgt. Schafer’s Colorado homecoming landed in Barb’s hands as an official DPAA document.

“They gave me this wonderful book of everything about him. Everything about the anthropological studies on the bones, and it's just absolutely amazing,” said Barb. “The care that they take to, to study the bones and the dental work. We have pictures of everything.”

She said it was the personal connection to her uncle Harold that she waited decades to discover.

“It was like the first I've met him, like hello – there you are,” said Barb.

One particularly moving section of the DPAA document brought peace of mind.

“Probably the most touching thing to me was to open that page and there he was,” added Barb.

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A page detailing the bones that were recovered told a story about Schafer’s final moment that always worried the family.

“The lower jaw was there, the upper cranium they pieced together,” said Barb. “Gone was the facial areas, so you knew machine gun fire at the face – we knew he was gone instantly which was a comfort to me,”

Out there in the German woods, there are lessons to be learned for Chris Seiwert.

“That’s the difference between Germans and Americans. For the Americans, their soldiers are heroes, in German nobody would ever say the German soldiers are heroes,” he said.

Seiwert’s own dad was drafted into the German military at only age 17 as an anti-aircraft gunner. He remembers asking his father what he was thinking during the battles.

“We were ordered to down as many American bombers as we could, that’s what we did,” Seiwert said his dad used to say. “You didn’t have time to look at the bombers,”

When Seiwert asked his dad if he thought of the men inside those American bombers, he replied: “Actually no, when you looked at the sky they were like tiny, you couldn’t even see much,” he said.

“Sometimes when you saw that one bomber was going down, today you would say ‘give me a high five’. That was it,”

The horrors Germany unleashed on the war can never be forgotten, but in his own way, Seiwert has worked his entire adult life to close painful chapters for families of soldiers on both sides of World War II.

“My father was drafted when he was 17 and there was only a minority who really were Nazis fighting and believing all that stuff,” said Seiwert. “The vast majority were no Nazis, they were just drafted,”

Seiwert said towards the end of the war, his father was deployed in an anti-tank outfit when he was captured by the Russians and taken to a POW camp. In August 1945, he was liberated with other soldiers from the POW camp by pretending to be French. “He was cheating the Russians,” said Seiwert.

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Seiwert's group, which has helped solve mysteries for many families, continues the search.

“Because we don’t think they deserve lying still in a foxhole and zigzagging trench,” he said.It’s a noble mission carried out daily at the DPAA.“Finding a service member can answer questions and bring closure to that family,” added Everette.

He said families looking to find long-sought answers around a missing service member should first contact the specific branch in which that person served.

“Because every service has a mortuary affairs or a casualty office dedicated to past conflicts, for those missing from past conflicts,’ said Everette. “One of the first things those people are going to ask for is a DNA reference sample.”

He said the vast majority of positive identifications happen because of advancements in DNA technology. “That can get the ball rolling if we're not already actively searching for their family member,” added Everette. The DPAA has a number of researchers and analysts whose job it is to pour through historical records, talk to eyewitnesses and visit potential sites to recover and identify remains.

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“They’re history detectives and they’re going through and trying to put all these puzzle pieces together to solve the puzzle,” said Everette. “

Once the initial work is done, the recovery work typically goes in two directions. The DPAA can send a recovery team headed by an archaeologist to do excavation work on a site to recover remains. The other route, similar to how Schafer was recovered, involves researchers visiting overseas American military cemeteries to analyze remains buried as unknown service members.

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“Before we can go either on a recovery mission or go to the cemetery and possibly disinter those remains, this is when we tell the service casualty office, ‘hey, we might know where this person is, do you have any contact with the family,’” added Everette. “If yes, chances are that means there’s already DNA on file. If not, then the service has to go and find a family member that we could get DNA from.”

Once the positive identification has been made, that information is shared with that specific branch’s casualty office who will then contact the family to let them know their loved one is ready to come home.

“And then they’ll schedule a time to do a larger, sit down identification briefing with the family to give them all of the information on how their service member went missing, how they were found and how they were ID’d,” said Everette.

At that point, family will decide where they want the loved one to be buried.

“Some families choose Arlington National Cemetery in D.C., others choose the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu,” he added. For Barb, her family’s decision was to bring Sgt. Harold Schafer home to Colorado 80 years after he left Denver to fight the war.

“It’s important that all the people who have served in the military will not be forgotten, that their service is not in vain,” said Barb. “It isn’t just their service and how their lives have been changed by the horrors of war, but it’s their families too. Sometimes the families never recover and the hurt goes on and on.”

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Along with Seiwert, Barb said there are lessons to be learned through the search for her Uncle Harold.

“We just want all the military to know how much they are appreciated for their service to protect our freedom,” she said. “Because when you are free everyday to do what you want here in America we need to think about the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who have their lives.”

A sacrifice that runs deep.

“Even if they didn't give their lives, they gave a huge chunk of their soul that was damaged by the things that they saw. We need to never forget and I’m afraid the young people now might be forgetting or not even realizing what the cost of freedom has been.”

Sgt. Harold Schafer, born May 22, 1916, will receive full military honors and will be remembered in a funeral service in Lakewood followed by a burial at Fort Logan National Cemetery on Monday, July 29.

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A missing WWII soldier from Denver was finally found thanks his niece's resolve

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