Page 21 - O Mahony Society Newsletter NOV 2025_Neat

Seven months after the pivotal D-Day invasion of the French
Almost 80 Years Later, U.S. Soldier Identified coast, a baby-faced Army private from Chicago and his anti-

by Adeel Hassan tank company were resupplying and reinforcing Allied forces
Excerpted from The New York Times - November 12, 2024 for weeks along a 40-mile-wide front on the France-Germany
border in early January 1945.
During a fierce German counterattack with heavy artillery and mortar fire near Reipertswiller, France, the 19-year-old private, Jeremiah P.
Mahoney, was digging a foxhole.
“Shells were falling,” a soldier in the company later wrote to Private Mahoney’s mother in Chicago. “One came close, and this fellow jumped
into the foxhole on top of Mahoney. Then, at once, another one came in bursting in a tree, spraying shrapnel downward into this open, half-
finished hole.”

Private Mahoney was killed during the pitched battle. His company was forced to retreat from the area, and his body could not be immediately
recovered. The War Department issued a presumptive finding of death in January 1946 because the Army had no record of German forces’
capturing Private Mahoney, and no remains.

But last month, the Defense P.O.W/M.I.A Accounting Agency, or D.P.A.A., a Defense Department agency that tries to find and identify the bodies
of service members who go missing during wars, announced that Private Mahoney had been accounted for.
“For the first time in my life, I had a familiarity with this long-lost uncle,” said Jerry Mannell, 72, when he learned of the identification of Private
Mahoney, whom he had 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.”
By 1947, French civilians and demining units found many human remains in the forest near Reipertswiller. They told American military personnel,
who recovered 37 unidentified sets of remains. Those of Private Mahoney were collected, but they could not be identified with the scientific
methods available at the time.

He was not alone. About 8.500 sets of remains of soldiers killed in World War II also could not be identified. These were buried in American
military cemeteries under marble markers with the word “Unknown.” Private Mahoney was interred as an “unknown” person in the Ardennes
American Cemetery in Neupré, Belgium, in 1949.

Private Mahoney was one of an estimated 400,000 American service members who died in the war. Most of them were sent home to their
families or buried overseas in marked graves.
While it was once believed that many of the “unknowns” would remain unidentified forever, improvements in forensic techniques and DNA
testing have given glimmers of hope that some of the fallen soldiers might be identified.
The remains are sent to the D.P.A.A. lab so that forensic anthropologists can analyze and catalog them. If there are teeth intact, forensic
odontologists can examine them to help with identification. The lab can also match bone X-rays and use advanced software for data analysis.

Private Mahoney’s remains were exhumed by investigators in 2022 for fresh analysis, and they were identified using DNA samples from
his family.

“Kudos to the Army for sticking with this for 75 years,” Mr. Mannell said. “So they truly leave no soldier behind.”
Private Mahoney grew up on the South Side of Chicago, the oldest of four children, and graduated from St. Ignatius College Prep in 1943. He
entered the Army after high school, and he arrived in the European Theater of Operations around February 1944, military records show.

He served in Italy and France and was part of Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of southern France. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal
and Purple Heart.
“He and I shared the same foxhole many times, same blankets, food, clothes, etc.,” wrote the soldier in the letter to Private Mahoney’s mother.
“Of all the men in there that I’ve seen in action, none was of stouter heart than your son. Everybody liked Mahoney.
“He was the sort of fellow who could be depended on every time. By that I mean he never hesitated to perform his duties come what might.
Mahoney never, in spite of how rough things got, lost his nerve nor sense of humor.”

More than 72,000 American soldiers are still unaccounted for from World War II. From the Korean War, there are more than 7,400 still missing.
And from Vietnam, about 1,500 are missing.

But Private Mahoney will be buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery next spring, a century after he was born.
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