As a child, Peggy Gouras would help her grandmother, Josephine Mayfield, tend the grave of the uncle she would never know. William Mabry Mayfield, Gouras’s uncle who was known as Mabry by family and friends, was killed in World War II in 1944. His remains were never located.

The marker for Mabry’s grave reads: “Resting place known only to God.”

“My grandmother had this flag,” Gouras said, showing a picture of a flag with two blue stars embroidered on it. This signified that she had two sons fighting in the war. A gold star signifies a family member has been killed while in the service.

“Like all blue-star mothers, she prayed earnestly that she would not become a gold-star mother,” Gouras said.

A picture of a young Mabry shows the playfulness of his spirit in the jaunty tilt of his head and the broad smile across his face.

“He was chosen as one of the top ten most handsome guys in his high school by Ida Lapina, a famous MGM actress from the 1940s,” Gouras said.

Mabry, an engineering student, left school to join the military during World War II. After training, Mabry was sent to the front lines in Denmark, part of the 104th Infantry Division of the United States Army, nicknamed “The Timberwolves.”

“On October 10, 1944, my grandparents wrote a letter to him: ‘The weather’s cold, saw Mrs. Thompson on the street, got your letter from October 1. Please take care of yourself. Sending something warm for your feet in the next box. Write when you can. Tell us all you can, Love, Pop.'”

The response to the letter, Gouras said, was a shock.

“The letter was returned. There was no knock at the door, there was no telegram. On the envelope, someone had written the word ‘deceased’ and crossed it out. Above that, the word that changed my grandparents’ lives for the rest of their lives: ‘missing,'” Gouras said. “My grandmother began a writing campaign. She wrote to the White House; she wrote to the president. She wrote to the general of the Timberwolves. She wrote to the Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. They all answered her. Every letter (grandmother wrote) had the same thing: ‘Please look for my son. He’s missing.'”

Gouras’s grandmother reached out to the men with whom Mabry had enlisted, but no one knew what happened to the soldier. There was no official account of his status with the military.

Mabry’s absence was not noted by the military for some time, Gouras said.

“I hired a military researcher who found Mabry was (declared) missing on November 7. There’s no mention of him. It’s like he just disappeared.”

In February 1945, Mabry was listed as a Prisoner of War (POW). Hope bloomed in the hearts of Mabry’s parents, Gouras said. It wouldn’t last long.

In a letter dated May 31, 1945, Bill Myers, an enlisted friend of Mabry’s, wrote: “This is the most difficult letter I’ve ever had to write. I found a second lieutenant of Company E (Mabry’s unit). Out of 180 guys, 20 made it back. If there’s a heaven, Mabry is there now. He’s not coming home.”

It was later determined Mabry died October 7, 1944.

Josephine Mayfield had become a gold-star mother.

“She continued to write letters to anyone who could possibly help locate Mabry’s remains, including citizens of the Netherlands,” Gouras said. “Graves of the unidentified men killed in action, noted by numbers and letters, were checked to see if any of them could possibly be Mabry.”

Gouras picked up the search for answers in 2004 after her father passed away.

“I inherited this suitcase full of papers from my dad,” she said.

After many years and three trips to the Netherlands with the remaining members of the Timberwolves, she finally has most of the answers about Mabry.

One of the items in the suitcase is the last known writing by Mabry, a note scrawled in pencil on a coffee filter, presumably written as he crouched in a foxhole. In part, it reads: “Life is so sweet, you don’t realize how sweet it is ’til you get out here. Anyone who’s an atheist doesn’t remain one in battle. Everybody becomes a Christian. Haven’t met one yet that didn’t start thinking about God when he’s in combat. Captain Brit’s arm is off. Butler’s leg bone is protruding. Both singing . . . Germans wiped out an entire platoon in a gulley by mortar fire.”

During her first trip to the Netherlands, Gouras wanted to visit the American Cemetery in Margraten, where most of the deceased soldiers form WWII are buried, but found the tour bus was not taking the group that far. Two local citizens volunteered to take her to Margraten. Gouras squeezed into their Mini Cooper and went, only to find that the cemetery was closed when she got there. Although she considered scaling the wall to get in, the Dutch found a way to get her inside.

“As the sun was setting over all the sea of markers in the cemetery, we came to the Wall of the Missing, and about twelve feet from the ground are the words ‘William M. Mayfield, Private 104th, 414th, Louisiana.’ It was evidence Mabry had been there. I thought that finding Mabry’s name on the wall would be the closest I’d ever come to finding Mabry.”

But, on a second trip, a battle expert led her to a grassy area and told her, “You now stand on the dyke where Mabry was killed.”

Gouras collected a handful of dirt, which was later spread on Mabry’s grave marker in Louisiana. A full military burial, complete with a 21-gun salute, was conducted on the 69th anniversary of his death.

Gouras was able to get even closer on a trip to the Netherlands in October 2024, with a map drawn by one of Mabry’s enlisted friends pinpointing the area where his foxhole was located.

Gouras returned to the area of the foxhole, now a grassy industrial area, where she planted a yellow rosebush in memory of Mabry.

“I honor the mothers of the missing, those mothers who, at every creak of the stairs or slam of the screen door, had hoped beyond hope for one minute that maybe their lost son or child had found his way home,” Gouras said. “I’m so thankful, first of all, for the Dutch people. That they still remember and they still honor. I’m thankful for all the people who have helped me in this search. I’m thankful that I had a family that served. I have learned what a great country we have. We answered the call at great sacrifice.”