Seventy-three years ago on a sweltering hot June day in 1948, four American flag-draped coffins laid in honor in the Garland Stake Tabernacle in northern Utah. The sight was not uncommon for the time, being only a few years after the end of World War II. But the solemn silence that filled the room was different, this funeral was for four fallen Borgstrom brothers who had laid down their lives within a few months of each other while serving in defense of our freedom around the world.
Dignitaries far and wide came to pay their respects to a family who had given so much. President George Albert Smith of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was in attendance, as well as Utah Governor Herbert Maw and many military leaders, including General Mark Clark, Rear Admiral John Redman, Major General LeRoy Hunt, and Brigadier General Ned Schramm.
World War II took the lives of many Utahns, but no family in the state sacrificed more than Alben and Gunda Borgstrom. They were the proud parents of ten children with seven sons and three daughters. Their first son died as a child from appendicitis.
Later when the United States entered World War II, five of their sons who were old enough to serve enlisted in the armed forces between 1943 and 1944, but only one would come home alive. Four of the brothers would die within six months of each other.
Private First Class Clyde Elmer Borgstrom served as a member of the Marine Corps’ Aviation Engineers. He was the first of the Borgstrom brothers to join the military back in 1940 even before America had entered the war. He survived the fierce fighting of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in the south pacific, only to be crushed by a falling tree the next day when clearing land for an airstrip with a bulldozer on March 17, 1944.
The oldest, Private First Class Elmer Leroy Borgstrom, was a medic with the Army’s 91st Infantry Division. He was only 30 years old when his division stormed Anzio beach in Italy. Large casualties on the bloody beach caused Leroy to attend to many injured soldiers. He did not carry a weapon, as was convention, but was shot and killed by enemy forces on June 22, 1944.
Two months later, Sergeant Rolon Borgstrom was severely injured during an Allied air raid over Germany. He was a tail gunner in a B-24 “Liberator” bomber with the Army Air Force’s 605th Bomber Crew. His wounds proved fatal and later died in England.
Across the English Channel, Rolon’s twin brother Private First Class Rulon Borgstrom was serving as an infantryman with the U.S. Army’s 38th Regiment, 2nd Division. The twins had entered service together a year earlier.
Rulon had stormed into France with the infantry as part of the D-day offensive. On August 25, 1944, just two weeks after his brother Rolon had died, Rulon was reported missing during an attack on Le Dreff, France. He was found 18 days later but died of his wounds.
When word reached the family that Rulon was missing in action, the Borgstrom family and their neighbors petitioned for Boyd, the remaining Borgstrom brother, to be released from military service. Utah’s congressional delegation learned of the family’s petition and lobbied on their behalf.
Shortly after, Boyd was transferred back to the United States and discharged by special order of the Marine Corps’ commandant. The Borgstrom youngest, Eldon, who was not yet old enough to enlist, was also exempted from military service.
One of the Borgstrom sisters remembers that the telegraph agent at the Western Union office refused to deliver the message reporting Rulon’s death because he did not want “to see Mrs. Borgstrom faint in grief again.”
The bodies of the four fallen Borgstrom brothers took nearly four years to be returned to Utah. The American Graves Registration Service searched service member grave sites in both war theaters of the Pacific and Europe in order to find and identify them.
At the funeral, the brothers were posthumously awarded three Bronze Star Medals, one Air Medal, and one Good Conduct Medal. Colonel Lenorad Crews of the Sixth Army escort detachment said the Borgstroms “were the only four-star Gold Star family on record in World War II.”
The death of the four Borgstrom brothers, along with the loss of all five Sullivan brothers, heavily influenced the official adoption of the Sole Survivor Policy in 1948.
The Army honored the Borgstrom brothers by naming a reserve training center in Ogden, Utah in their honor in 1959. A memorial was erected in 2001 in Tremonton, Utah which has the names and images of the brothers placed on it in prominence.
This Memorial day, and every day, may we remember the great sacrifices borne by our service members and their families in defense of our freedom.
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