An Army soldier who died in World War II has been identified nearly 80 years after his death

A young U.S. Army soldier from Chicago who died in combat during World War II spent nearly 80 years as unnamed remains. Now he has been identified and will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

19-year-old soldier Jeremiah P. Mahoney was part of an anti-tank company that fought against German forces in France.

In January 1945, the Germans reinforced his position at Reipertswiller in France during a fierce counterattack that included heavy artillery and mortar fire.

According to the report, Mahoney was digging a foxhole when the German shelling beganNew York Times.

“Shells were falling,” another soldier in his company wrote in a letter to Mahoney’s mother. “One guy got close and that guy jumped into the foxhole on Mahoney. Then suddenly another burst into a tree and hurled shrapnel down into this open, half-finished hole.”

Mahoney was killed by the explosion. His company was driven out of Reipertswiller by the German advance, so his body could not be immediately recovered by the Allied troops. In 1946, the U.S. War Department found no evidence that Mahoney had been captured, and since there were no remains to confirm his death, a presumptive death sentence was passed.

Now, nearly 80 years later, researchers at the Defense Department’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) – which attempts to find and identify the bodies of soldiers who go missing during wars – believe they have identified Mahoney’s remains.

Mahoney was first discovered in 1947 by French deminers who found numerous human remains in Reipertswiller. They informed US military officials of their findings, who then ordered the remains to be collected and returned to the US for identification.

Among the remains found were the 19-year-old’s remains, but due to technical limitations no one could positively identify them.

He – and the other 8,500 sets of American remains from World War II that were never identified – were eventually buried under the name “unknown” in American military cemeteries around the world. Mahoney was buried at the Ardennes American Cemetery in Belgium in 1949.

In the years since Mahoney’s death, forensic techniques and DNA analysis have improved significantly, allowing investigators to solve decades-old unsolved cases and catch elusive serial killers using only scraps of biological material. The same tools were also used to assign Mahoney’s name to his remains.

In 2022, Mahoney was exhumed from his grave and his remains were tested using biological samples provided to him by his living relatives. They matched.

Jerry Mannell, 72, is Mahoney’s nephew. The two never met, but he told the Times that he finally felt a degree of “familiarity” with his uncle. He also expressed some sadness that Mahoney’s immediate family died before a clear identification could be made.

Still, he praised the U.S. Army for continuing to work to identify his uncle all these years later.

“Kudos to the Army for sticking with it for 75 years,” he told the Times. “So they really don’t leave any soldiers behind.”

Next spring – 100 years after his birth – Mahoney will be buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

More than 72,000 Americans who fought in World War II are still awaiting their location and identification. There are still 7,500 people missing from the Korean War, while the number from Vietnam is 1,500.