Alvin Scarborough went off to war more than 80 years ago. And today, he’s finally coming home….
“Anything that we can do to honor him, you know, I’m in on it.”
Roger Barrett is the Ride Captain for a group of motorcyclists who’ll be escorting the hearse carrying Scarborough’s remains from Memphis to Carthage this afternoon. The Patriot Guard Riders have been honoring fallen service members and first responders since 2005…
“I do it because I just feel like it needs to be done.”
During World War Two, Scarborough, a native of Dossville, was a staff sergeant serving with the Army’s 454th Ordnance Company (Aviation) when Japanese forces invaded the Philippines shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. He was taken prisoner and forced to endure the infamous Bataan Death March which he survived. But he later died of malaria and dysentery in a POW camp in July of 1942 at the age of 22. He was buried in a mass grave along with other POWs. After the war, his remains could not be identified and he was listed as unaccounted for. But in 2018, remains exhumed from an American cemetery in Manila were taken for laboratory analysis and were officially identified as Scarborough’s in 2023.
Those remains will be arriving by plane in Memphis around noontime today and will be transported down I-55 to the Vaiden exit, then south on Highway 35…
“(They’re) coming down through Kosciusko. We expect them to be around Kosciusko, or Carthage, I should say, about 3:30 or somewhere in that area.”
Barrett is encouraging the public to come out to pay their respects…
“If you want to get your people up in there to be on the side of the road and welcome him home, that would be great.”
The Patriot Guard Riders will stand a flag line for visitation for Staff Sergeant Scarborough at Wilcox Funeral Home in Carthage from 12:30 until 2:30 Saturday and will provide an escort to Corinth Baptist Church in the Singleton community for his funeral service. He’ll be laid to rest at the cemetery there with full military honors.
