Soldier’s remains finally coming home
It’s been nearly 80 years since James B. McCartney has been home.
The remains of the U.S. Army infantryman who was killed during the waning months of World War II — and then lost for decades to the fog of war — will be buried March 30 at Hillcrest Memorial Park & Mortuary in east Bakersfield following a graveside service, the Army’s Human Resources Command said in a news release.
A native of Ridgeway, Colo., Pvt. McCartney was assigned to Company B, 1st Battalion, 222nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd Infantry Division. He was 22 when he was killed in action March 1, 1945, while his unit was on patrol near Wildenguth, France, about 80 miles from the German border.
It was just 69 days before VE Day, the end of the war in Europe.
Six years after the war, McCartney was declared non-recoverable on Oct. 8, 1951, after investigators searching for fallen American soldiers in the European Theater failed to recover any leads regarding his remains, according to the release.
Indeed, the Germans never reported McCartney as a prisoner of war, and apparently, his remains were not immediately recovered.
Years later, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency historians, conducting ongoing research into servicemen missing from combat around Wildenguth, found that remains designated X-6492, buried in Lorraine American Cemetery in St. Avold, France, could be associated with McCartney. X-6492 was disinterred for laboratory analysis in August 2022.
McCartney was officially accounted for by the DPAA on Sept. 21, 2023, after his remains were positively identified using dental, anthropological, mitochondrial DNA and autosomal DNA analysis.
It was a major breakthrough, using technology and science, much of which was not available decades ago.
According to Hillcrest, McCartney’s graveside service will begin at 1:30 p.m. March 30 at the cemetery’s Garden of Memory.
But Hillcrest and a corporate spokeswoman were not able to answer the
question of why the remains of the young soldier will be laid to rest in Bakersfield. They were also not able to immediately provide a reporter’s name and contact information to any potential family member or members in the Bakersfield area.
Also, a message left at the Army Casualty Office was not immediately returned.
Sandi Jantz, deputy executive director of the Portrait of a Warrior Gallery in downtown Bakersfield, said she thinks it’s likely there’s family of the fallen soldier somewhere in Bakersfield or in one of the surrounding communities.
“This is a big deal,” Jantz said. “For 80 years this man has not had a home.”
And he deserves the honors Bakersfield has bestowed on others who were returned home to the southern valley after being lost to war. He deserves our attention, she said, whether McCartney ever lived here or not.
“There’s no better home for him,” Jantz said. “This is the best place he could be laid to rest because we honor those who have served.”