After 75 Years, Fallen Marlborough Soldier Comes Home

MARLBOROUGH, MA — A Marlborough soldier finally came home. More than 75 years after Technical Sergeant Alfred Sandini's death in action during World War II, his remains were flown to Logan Airport Thursday and a motorcade brought him home to Marlborough to be reunited and buried next to his family.

Sandini served in the 22nd Bombardment Squadron, 341st Bombardment Group. During his last mission, Sandini was a radio gunner on a B-25C Mitchell bomber carrying five other crew members on a bombing mission in French Indochina, which is now Vietnam. The plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashed into an island in the Gulf of Tonkin, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

Sandini and his crew members were killed in the crash, but Sandini's remains weren't found until 1949, in a burial site in northern French Indochina and then eventually determined as "unknowns" and interned in an American military cemetery in China. Sandini was just 25-years-old.

Sandini's name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery, an American Battle Monuments Commission site in the Philippines, along with others missing from WWII. In 2016 analysts from the POW/MIA Accounting Agency reviewed files regarding remains that were initially recovered in 1949 from a burial site in northern French Indochina and then eventually determined as "unknowns" and interned in an American military cemetery in China. Using modern forensic techniques in the re-review of the "unknowns," analysts successfully identified Sandini from them.

From Thursday through Saturday, Marlborough plans to properly honor Sandini, starting with a motorcade for his arrival. On Friday, public viewing hours at the wake will be from 3:00-6:00 p.m. and his family will be presented with some military awards at approximately 4:00pm at the Brown and Short Funeral home.

On Saturday, the funeral mass will start at 11:00 a.m. at the Immaculate Conception Church and Sandini will be escorted from Brown and Short Funeral home at 10:45 a.m. to the church. At the end of the mass, the funeral procession will make it's way to the Immaculate Conception Cemetery.

Sandini will be buried next to his parents, per his mother's last wish. According to The Boston Globe, Sandini's mother never gave up hope that she would be reunited with him.