UPDATE: Since I can’t tell if this story is true or not, I did some searching and found some more context and information about the infamous “Uncle Bosie.” This information comes from the New Yorker website from a few years ago. It had some other information about “Uncle Bosie” and said:
Biden probably didn’t know the details of Sheene, Sr.,’s death. Family stories get passed down from one generation to the next, like a game of telephone. Over time, the narrative is refined: heroes are made, shameful details are edited out, fables become facts. Biden, in his memoir, wrote that his uncle Bosie had been “shot down.” (The same phrasing was used in Valerie’s memoir.) But, according to another man, who was in the airplane at the time—the sole survivor of the accident—the plane got lost, ran out of fuel, and then crashed into the sea. The President’s uncle died in a tragic accident, not in combat.
President Joe Biden gave the following remarks about an “Uncle Bosie.” These are Joe Biden’s words and the remarks were listed on the WhiteHouse.GOV website for all to read:
Q Mr. President, will you talk about the war memorial you were just at very briefly? What did you see? What did you hear?
THE PRESIDENT: I wanted to see where my uncle, Ambrose J. Finnegan, was memorialized. And there was a World War Two memorial built for those who lost their lives in World War Two.
And when D-Day occurred, the next day, on Monday, all four of my mother’s brothers went down and volunteered to join the military. And four of them — three of them made it. One was 4-F — couldn’t go.
And Ambrose Finnegan — we called him “Uncle Bosie” — he — he was shot down. He was Army Air Corps before there was an Air Force. He flew single-engine planes, reconnaissance flights over New Guinea. He had volunteered because someone couldn’t make it. He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals in New Guinea at the time.
They never recovered his body. But the government went back, when I went down there, and they checked and found some parts of the plane and the like.
And what I was thinking about when I was standing there was when Trump refused to go up to the memorial for veterans in Paris, and he said they were a bunch of “suckers” and “losers.”
To me, that is such a disqualifying assertion made by a president — “suckers” and “losers.” The guys who saved civilization in the 1940s — “suckers” and “losers.”
And I just wanted to go and — we have a tradition in our family that my grandfather started. When you visit a gravesite of a family member — it’s going to sound strange to you, but — you say three Hail Marys. And that’s what I was doing at the site.
My — my gran- — my uncle, Ambrose Finnegan — Uncle — Uncle Bosie was a hell of a guy from what I — I never met him, obviously.
And — but I just wanted to see where he was memorialized.
Q And, Mr. President, what do you think about these separate bills for Ukraine and Israel aid? Are you confident that it’s going to get through?
THE PRESIDENT: I’m getting briefed on it when I get on the plane. That’s why I was talking to my staff. I’ll tell you then.
Thank you
