MISSING IN ACTION SERVICEMAN IDENTIFIED

HICKAM AFB, HAWAII — The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced that the remains of two U.S. Army service members missing in action from World War II have been identified March 30 and will be returned to their families for burial with full military honors.

Virginia resident Sgt. John T. Puckett and Kansas resident Pvt. Earnest E. Brown were listed as presumed dead after a mission in Belgium.

Puckett, 21 years old, and Brown, 29, were assigned to Company B, 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division which was operating near the town of Elsenborn. Jan. 15, 1945, Puckett and Brown were with a combat patrol that was investigating a wooded area near their camp for German soldiers. The patrol came under enemy gun and mortar fire. Because of the intense enemy activity, rescue and recovery attempts were futile. Puckett and Brown were not seen again.

In 1992, two Belgian nationals, with an interest in the wartime efforts of the 99th Infantry Division, located and excavated an abandoned fighting position in the forest near Elsenborn, Belgium. Their excavation yielded what they believed were the skeletal remains of two American soldiers. The recovered remains and other artifacts were turned over to U.S. officials in Europe, and transferred to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command’s Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii, in September 1999.

In March 2005, JPAC’s Central Identification Laboratory officially determined that the remains were those of Puckett and Brown. Scientists from JPAC used mitochondrial DNA as one of the forensic tools to identify the remains. A pillbox lid and cloth rank insignia that dates to 1944 are personal effects that were also provided to CIL. The items correlated to the last know area of the two soldiers.

The remains of Brown will be consigned to Sharrett Cemetery, in Bristol, Va. at an unknown date, while the remains of Puckett will be interred in the Ardennes American Cemetery and Memorial, Neuville-en-Conboz, Belgium, on June 18.