Altoona native to be buried at Arlington,

** Cpl. John McNichol, earned citation for bravery at Guadalcanal, killed in WWII.**

native John McNichol was a high school dropout who was once charged with auto larceny, as a Marine, he went AWOL very briefly, and he asked for and received a transfer, because he didn’t get along with a superior, according to his nephew, Thomas McNichol of Boalsburg.

But Cpl. John McNichol, _“pretty much a rabble-rouser,”_according to his nephew, redeemed himself: At the battle of Guadalcanal, he earned a citation for bravery, then at Tarawa, he died — and was buried in an unmarked grave.

On Monday, McNichol will receive an honor befitting those redemptive actions when his remains, identified last fall by a military agency, are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

His 67-year-old nephew, despite serving in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, has long believed that “young men shouldn’t be fighting wars that old men (start).”

Nevertheless, after providing a DNA sample to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency three years ago and after hearing that they’d found his uncle’s skeletal remains in September and after reading through the 140-page personnel file the agency sent and after seeing a picture of his uncle in uniform, the situation has touched him.

Thomas McNichol cried when he put the picture they sent of his uncle in uniform next to a picture of his father in uniform — his father, as well as two other McNichol brothers also served in World War II — and recognized how similar they looked.

“Here’s this man I didn’t know,” Thomas McNichol said. “(Yet) he’s my flesh and blood.”

The other three McNichol brothers survived the war but have since died.

In signing up for the Marines for the Second World War, his uncle had done “a noble thing.”

“He put his life on the line,” Thomas McNichol said.

Based on the personnel file sent by the agency, the nephew has learned that his uncle must have been _“a character,”_with the larceny that was probably a joyride, letters of recommendation from his priest and _“the local constabulary”_ that enabled him to get into the service and the AWOL, which lasted just 28 minutes, he said.

And yet there is a harsh irony in the transfer that he requested, which put him in the unit in whose service he died, the nephew observed.

And McNichol’s death apparently led to the death of his mother, who died just six months later of a heart attack.

“She went into some kind of shock,” Thomas said. “He was apparently her sweetheart.”

Although Thomas provided DNA to the agency, Cpl. McNichol’s remains were identified through dental records, according to Sgt. 1st Class Kristen Duus, agency spokeswoman.

His nearly complete skeleton was disinterred by a third-party contractor, History Flight Inc., Duus said.

The agency conducts several kinds of DNA testing and also uses “anthropological analysis,” which takes into account size, age, gender and race, Duus said.

It also uses chest X-rays and circumstantial and material evidence, she said.

Cpl. McNichol died on the island of Betio on Nov. 21, 1943, the second day of the three-day battle at Tarawa atoll, where 1,000 Marines and sailors were killed and where the Japanese defenders were “virtually annihilated,” according to an agency news release.

The battle of Tarawa was a major victory for the U.S. because it provided a platform for operations against the Marshall and Caroline islands, according to the news release.

Of 16 million Americans who served in World War II, more than 400,000 died, and 72,934 remain unaccounted for, according to the news release.

Of those, about 34,000 are deemed “possibly non-recoverable,” according to the news release — although McNichol’s remains were also judged to be unrecoverable in 1949, after a graves registration company conducted operations on Tarawa.

The funeral will bring together a clan that wasn’t close while Thomas was growing up.

“I’ve called up family members I haven’t talked to in 50 years,” he said. “It’s going to be awesome.”

John V McNichol