Slovik’s Body Turns Up in San Francisco
ROMULUS, Mich. — The remains of Pvt. Eddie Slovik, which were lost Thursday while being returned to Detroit more than four decades after he was executed in France for desertion during World War II, were found today in San Francisco.
Dwayne Swindle, TWA station manager in Detroit, said the remains had been accidentally sidetracked to San Francisco but the cause of the mix-up had not been determined.
The remains failed to arrive as scheduled Thursday night at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on a TWA flight from New York’s Kennedy International Airport.
“These things happen every day,†said Bernard Calka, a Polish-American Army veteran who organized the effort on behalf of the only U.S. soldier executed for desertion since the Civil War. “That’s the way I’m accepting it. It’s one of those things.â€
Slovik was shot by a U.S. firing squad on Jan. 31, 1945, about a year after he was drafted. The 24-year-old Army private was buried in a numbered grave in France among the graves of 94 other American soldiers who were hanged for rape and murder during the war.
His remains were exhumed Wednesday, and burial is planned Saturday in Detroit next to the grave of his wife, Antoinette, who died in 1979 after spending years trying to have her husband’s name cleared with a presidential pardon.
Calka has spent about $5,000 to get the remains back to Michigan to “ease the years of pain for the Slovik family.â€
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