Long listed as missing, remains of WWII soldier from Waterbury ID’D
The remains of a U.S. Army sergeant from Waterbury who went missing during a savage World War II battle have been identified, the Department of Defense announced Thursday.
Sgt. Bernard J. Sweeney Jr. was reported missing on Dec. 16, 1944, during the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest. His remains were positively identified in June, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
Sweeney, 22, was assigned to Company I of the 330th Infantry Regiment, 83rd Infantry Division, which was fighting German forces near Strass, Germany, when he was reported missing.
The American Graves Registration Command conducted several investigations in the Hürtgen area from 1946-50, but were unable to recover or identify Sweeney’s remains. He was declared nonrecoverable
in November 1951, U.S. military officials said.
While studying unresolved American losses in the Hürtgen area, however, a historian from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency found that remains recovered from a minefield in 1946 might have been Sweeney’s.
Buried as an unknown soldier in the Ardennes American Cemetery in 1950, the remains were disinterred in April 2019 and sent to the DPAA laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, for identification.
Scientists used dental and anthropological analysis, circumstantial evidence and DNA to identify the remains.
Although the DPAA news release says Sweeney was from Waterbury, the agency’s online profile — bit.ly/3bhgeba — lists his home state as New York.
His grand-niece, Tammy Hynes, his oldest, closest living relative, told the Associated Press that her family is delighted over the identification and thankful for the military’s efforts.
Sweeney was her grandfather’s brother.
“I have some pride there and some really good feelings about what he did for all of our country, and the fact that they went to these great lengths to identify him and honor him in the way I think he should be honored for what he did, for giving his life for our great country,” said Hynes, 54, of Cape Coral, Florida. “I really wished my dad was still alive to know this.”
Hynes said funeral and burial services are still being planned. She said her family is trying to find the grave of Sweeney’s mother, who apparently died by suicide after learning her son died in the war, and bury him next to her.
After her father died five years ago, Hynes said she was going through his belongings and found letters Sweeney wrote during the war.
She said he wrote about women he wanted to marry when he got home, being promoted to sergeant and other topics.
Fiercely defended, the approximately 50-square-mile Hurtgen Forest was the scene of months of hard fighting that left 33,000 Americans killed and wounded. An article on the U.S. Army Center of Military History’s website says “wasted machines and shattered equipment were strewn throughout the forest and the stench, from bodies left in the open, was almost unbearable. The dead had to wait for some future graves registration teams to move them from the forest as the many wounded swamped the overtaxed evacuation system.”
Sweeney’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at Netherlands American Cemetery, an American Battle Monuments Commission site in Margarten, Netherlands, along with others still missing from World War II. A rosette will be placed next to his name to show he has been accounted for, officials said. The location and date of Sweeney’s funeral have not been decided, the DPAA said.
Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, about 72,000 remain unaccounted for, according to the agency.