Chicago World War II soldier identified nearly 80 years after he was killed in combat
For three-quarters of a century, the remains of the U.S. soldier killed in a fierce World War II battle in the French countryside were buried in a cemetery in Belgium, where he was identified simply as X-6379.
But nearly 80 years later, using DNA and other evidence, the long-unidentified hero has a name:
Jeremiah P. Mahoney, 19, a U.S. Army private from Chicago.
The young Chicago man’s immediate family is apparently long gone, so the discovery left remaining relatives with mixed emotions.
“For the first time in my life, I had a familiarity with this long-lost uncle,” Jerry Mannell, 72, told the New York Times when he learned of the identification of the relative he never met.
“There was a sense of closure and relief. But there was a larger sense of remorse for his immediate family not having this information before they passed.”
Mahoney was killed sometime on Jan. 17, 1945, near the village of Reipertswiller, France, during combat with German forces, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, or DPPA. Because the fighting was so intense, Mahoney's unit couldn’t recover his body, the agency said.
Mahoney was assigned to the Anti-Tank Company, 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division in the European Theater during World War II.
Just before midnight on Dec. 31, 1944, German forces launched a major offensive, known as Operation NORDWIND, in the Vosges Mountains in Alsace-Lorraine, France, officials said. In the following weeks, the German forces fought their way through allied defenses along the border of Germany and France.
With no record of German forces capturing Mahoney, and no remains recovered, the War Department issued a “Finding of Death” for Mahoney in January 1946, the agency said.
A year later, the American Graves Registration Command, the organization that searched for and recovered deceased American personnel in the European Theater, recovered remains, clothing and equipment in Reipertswiller Forest but were unable to identify the body at the time, officials said. The organization designated the then-unidentified soldier as X-6379.
In 1949, the AGRC interred the soldier in the Ardennes American Cemetery in Belgium.
DPAA historians conducting in-depth research on soldiers missing from combat around the area where Mahoney was killed believed he could be associated with the remains found in 1947, the agency said in a press release. Mahoney was exhumed from the Ardennes American Cemetery in August 2022 and taken to the DPAA laboratory for analysis.
Scientists from the agency and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used anthropological and other circumstantial evidence as well as mitochondrial, Y chromosome and autosomal DNA analysis to identify Mahoney's remains.
Mahoney’s name was recorded on the Walls of the Missing at Epinal American Cemetery in Dinozé, France, along with others still missing from World War II, and a rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for, according to the DPAA.
Mahoney will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery on a date to be determined.
He was awarded a Bronze Star Medal and Purple Heart, according to his military profile.
Since the 1970s renewal of efforts to recover U.S. soldiers who were prisoners of war or missing in action, nearly 1,700 missing World War II soldiers have been identified and returned to their families for full military burials, according to the DPAA.
But more than 81,000 soldiers remain unaccounted for, according to the agency. Of those soldiers, roughly 72,000 served in World War II.