As World War II entered its final year in 1945, a 19-year-old Army soldier from Columbia got caught an intense battle thousands of miles away from home.
Arthur W. Crossland Jr. was fighting German forces in a heavily wooded area near Althorn, France, when a mine exploded, killing him instantly. Facing mortars and machine gun fire, his fellow soldiers had to withdraw from the area before body could be recovered.
Crossland died in March 1945 and within six months the war would be over. The following year, the military began searching for Crossland’s remains. Nearly 80 years later, that search has come to an end.
Crossland’s remains were identified using DNA technology, and now his family can lay him to rest in his hometown.
According to a news release from Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), Crossland will be buried in Columbia on March 14. His remains were recovered from Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France.
More than 9,000 U.S. troops are buried at the cemetery, and hundreds of the graves contain unidentified remains. In July 2022, workers from the Department of Defense and American Battle Monuments Commission exhumed the remains of X-535 and transferred them to a laboratory for analysis.
Scientists used anthropological and other circumstantial evidence to identify the remains, according to the release. “Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y-chromosome DNA (Y-STR) analysis,” it said.
On Aug. 21, 2024, scientists concluded that the remains of X-535 belonged to Crossland, a private 1st Class soldier assigned to Company L, 3rd Battalion, 242nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd Infantry Division in the European Theater.
More than 400,000 U.S. soldiers died in World War II. According to the New York Times, more than 72,000 of them are still unaccounted for.
Before Crossland’s remains were identified, he had already been memorialized Walls of the Missing at Epinal American Cemetery in Dinozé, France. Now that he has been accounted for, a rose will be placed next to his name.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)