Missing in Action (MIA)

During their time in combat, the 103rd Infantry Division also had men who were tragically listed as Missing in Action (MIA) on their rosters. After engagements with enemy forces, it was not uncommon for platoon leaders or others in positions leadership to not have immediate knowledge of the whereabouts of every man under their command, and would list their soldiers as missing. In the majority of these cases, soldiers might be discovered later on as killed or wounded, or might have been temporarily separated from their units by the fighting. In these cases, the soldiers who were discovered or recovered had their status’ upgraded from MIA to the appropriate categorization. In other instances, soldiers who had been taken prisoner by the Germans would oftentimes be listed as MIA until the Germans passed along lists of captured American soldiers through official channels. While the practice of passing along lists of captured soldiers between the Germans and the Americans did occur, it was not always formalized or accurate information. Because of this, some soldiers remained MIA until the end of the war when either they or their POW camps were liberated.

In the most tragic cases however, a soldier or their remains were never discovered or able to be recovered, and therefore those individuals officially remained listed as MIA. While this might seem strange, the conditions and confusion of the battlefields of World War II from swift movements to weapons of terrifying destructive power meant that some soldiers were either lost in the confusion or killed and their bodies deformed to the point where identification of the remains was impossible. In some rarer instances, a soldier’s body could not be recovered because the location of where the individual died was unknown to anyone in the unit. Due to this, and the devastating reality of combat for the soldiers of the 103rd Infantry who were on the front lines and constantly moving and advancing, some soldiers and their remains were left behind and never found.

Since the end of the war, and with renewed effort starting in the 1970s, the Department of Defense (DOD) has led various initiatives to locate the remains of those still listed as Missing in Action or were Prisoners of War and to bring those remains home to give families peace of mind and closure. The most well-known group still working today to locate and bring home the remains of those who are Missing is the Department of Defense’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). This dedicated group of researchers and archaeologists work closely with the military, Department of State, and other federal departments to bring home those Americans, including those members of the 103rd Infantry Division who are still listed as Missing in Action.

For more information about the tireless work of the DPAA, please click on the link below: