(ABC 6 News)- A guard of honor laid to rest a hero of World War Two 81 years after his death. The solemn ceremony took place at rural Charles City’s Riverton Cemetery on Wednesday.

Lt. Max E. Dailey was born in Cherokee, Iowa, but his nephew’s wife Elaine mead, calls him “Iowa’s boy” because he lived in many parts of the state during his short life.

“He was studying to be an art teacher,” Mead said. “That is when he enrolled in the air corps”

His final letter home came from northern Africa in the summer of 1943, where was serving as a navigator on a B-24 “Liberator” aircraft with the 9th Army Air Forces.

“I have the funniest feeling about things at home,” the letter reads, “…since I have been away these six quick months- it seems that time should have been standing still and everything the same as when I left”

On august 1, 1943, in Operation Tidal Wave, Dailey and his plane were lost during the raid over oil fields in Nazi-allied Romania.

It was one of the costliest operations for the Army Air Forces in the European theater, killing more than three hundred aircrewmen.

Dailey was 21. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart.

His remains were not identified following the war, and buried in a tomb of unknown American soldiers, first in Romania and then Bulgaria.

The grave was first allowed to be exhumed in 2017, and the Department of Defense’s POW and MIA accounting agency identified William Mead of Charles City as Dailey’s next of kin last year.

Mead was born four years after Dailey’s death. “It’s been a very exciting day,” Mead said. “We’re just thrilled to have him back.”

Dailey was buried with full military honors at Mead’s family plot at Riverton Cemetery in rural Charles City.

Riders from the Iowa Patriot Guard escorted the remains in their journey from Omaha to a funeral home in Charles City, to the burial site on Wednesday.

“This is extremely humbling,” said Major Tim Peake, who coordinated funeral honors for Dailey. “Especially when it’s someone who’s been waiting eighty years to be honored the right way. He’s no longer in a tomb of unknowns, he’s not resting in a foreign land, he’s home.”