COLUMBIA, S.C. — For decades, the remains of a 19-year-old Columbia man who died serving his country during World War II have been at rest in a French cemetery, unnamed. After years of investigation, he's been identified -- and he's coming home.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced on Friday that U.S. Army Pvt. 1st Class Arthur W. Crossland Jr. had been accounted for, and his family has been notified.
The organization said that Crossland Jr. was assigned to Company L, 3rd Battalion, 242nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd Infantry Division in the European theater when he died during a major German offensive that began on New Year's Eve in 1944.
The German attack, known as Operation NORDWIND, happened in Alsace-Lorraine, France and enveloped two U.S. Corps along the 40-mile front. Officials said that, weeks later, Company L was assigned to move online near Althorn, France. Fighting followed in a wooded area "filled with minefields, and mortars and machine gun fire" that stopped Company L's push into the area. Witnesses said Crossland triggered a mine about 200 yards in front of the resistance line and died instantly, but a withdrawal meant his body was not recovered until after the war ended.
In 1946, the American Graves Registration Command began searching for and recovering fallen American personnel in Europe, including those in the Althorn area. It would be many years before remains found at the battle site could be identified as Crossland, and he was listed in 1950 as "non-recoverable."
But as technology advanced, Crossland's journey home would draw closer. In 2022, on the advice of historians researching the case, the Department of Defense and the American Battle Monuments Commission exhumed an unknown soldier identified as X-535. They took him to the DPAA laboratories to begin the process of learning the soldier's remains.
Through multiple forms of DNA analysis, anthropological clues and circumstantial evidence, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System learned X-535 was Crossland. His name, recorded on the Walls of the Missing at Apinal American Cemetery in Dinozé, France, will soon have a rosette next to it to signify that he has finally been accounted for.
He is scheduled to return home and be reburied on March 14, 2025.
