**IN LOVING MEMORY** 

**Ernest LaVerne Lund** Private, United States Marine Corps November 10, 1915 — May 21, 1944 

Ernest LaVerne Lund, a son of Minnesota, and a United States Marine, will be laid to rest more than eighty years after he gave his life in service to his country. He was born November 10, 1915, in Cannon Falls Township, Goodhue County, to Carl and Anna Lund. Ernest grew up in a large and close family of fourteen brothers and sisters as the second to youngest child. As a young man he worked on farms in Wilson and Hart, Minnesota for thirty dollars a month. Quiet, steady work that suited a quiet and kind young man. 

In November 1943, at the age of twenty-seven, Ernest enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and completed boot camp and tank training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was assigned to Company B, 2nd Armored Amphibian Battalion, Second Marine Division, Fleet Marine Force. 

On May 21, 1944, Private Lund died while working aboard USS LST-353 when an explosion tore through West Loch, Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii. The tragedy now known as the West Loch Disaster. West Loch was then a loading and staging area for Navy, Army, and Marine forces preparing for Operation Forager, the campaign to take the Mariana Islands. The number of men and/or military men who died in the explosion is unknown. Of the service members who were killed or lost, Ernest was listed as Missing in Action (MIA). Shipmates remembered him as a nice and quiet man who, in the rare hours of rest, would sit in the shade of a landing craft topside and read. 

In the 2010s, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency disinterred one of the unknown graves and found no match to DNA family reference samples then on file. In 2020, additional samples from children of Ernest’s siblings made identification possible when the grave was disinterred again in 2026. Three portions of the remains recovered were confirmed to be those of Private Ernest LaVerne Lund. After more than seven decades, he was accounted for. 

In 1944, Ernest was survived by his parents Carl and Anna Lund; three brothers - Clarence, Albert, and Herbert; and five sisters - Hannah Cockerham, Eva Pahos, Florence Feigum, Lillian Anderson, and Gladys Critchfield. He was preceded in death by siblings, Carl, Edna Bylund, Vern, Vivian, and Stella Pennison. Ernest is currently survived by nieces, nephews, and many other members of the extended Lund family, who have carried his name and his memory through the long years of uncertainty. 

A funeral service celebrating the life of this fallen Marine will be held on Saturday, October 17, 2026, at 1:00 p.m. at Markville Cemetery in Markville, Minnesota. He will be laid to rest beside his parents, Carl and Anna Lund. The family welcomes all who wish to attend and to honor Private Lund’s service, his sacrifice, and his long journey home. 

*Semper Fidelis* 

Company B, 2nd Armored Amphibian Battalion 

Second Marine Division · Fleet Marine Force