Remains of missing WWII US soldier identified
Federal officials have identified the remains of a US Army soldier from Massachusetts who went missing during World War II in Italy while his unit was engaged in defensive fighting, according to the Defense POW/ MIA Accounting Agency.
The agency said in a statement that Private Hom O. Wing’s remains were identified on April 6.
Wing had served in Company B, 7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division and was reported missing in action Feb. 2, 1944, near the town of Cisterna di Latina, in an area where his unit had been engaged “in defensive fighting against the enemy,” the agency said.
That September, the 3044th Graves Registration Company recovered remains near Ponte Rotto, about three miles west of Cisterna di Latina.
At the time, the remains had no identification tags or other means they could be identified, so they were sent to the Central Identification Point at Nettuno, where officials could confirm only that they belonged to an American soldier.
In 1948, the remains were declared unidentifiable and interred at what would be known as the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery.
But in 2021, the remains were disinterred and sent to a laboratory “for analysis and identification,” the agency said.
“The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established the remains as those of Private Wing.” Wing “is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno, Italy.”
It wasn’t immediately clear if Wing’s family plans to bring his remains to Massachusetts for burial.