Pvt. George Coe Browning is finally coming home.
Nearly 80 years after the Marine went missing in action during the bloody invasion of Iwo Jima, the former Bergen County resident will be laid to rest Monday in Englewood’s Brookside Cemetery alongside his mother. A Marine Honor Guard and his lone surviving relatives will honor his memory at the grave.
“He’s finally going to go back to where his mother is,” said Peter Clay, Browning’s 81-year-old nephew, who is flying in from Virginia with his wife and daughter for the funeral.
Clay grew up in Englewood, but was just a baby when his uncle died on the battlefield. Clay says his mother, who was Browning’s older sister, didn’t talk much about the tragedy — mainly because the family didn’t know much.
“All these years, we really didn’t know what happened,” Clay said.
But thanks largely to the work of WFI Research Group, a Florida-based nonprofit that works with the military to identify missing soldiers, Browning’s remains were positively identified in April and he’ll be given a military funeral on Monday.
“The Marine Corps is going to do the ceremony, and they have provided the transportation for me, my wife, and my daughter,” said Clay.
Browning was born in Minneapolis, but appears to have grown up in and around Englewood in Bergen County, according to military records obtained by NJ Advance Local. His mother, Carol Coe Browning, lived on East Clinton Avenue in Tenafly until her death in…
