Killed in WWII, Army Pvt. 1st Class Clossie Brown accounted for

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced recently that U.S. Army Pvt. 1st Class Clossie D. Brown, 36, of Frankfort, Indiana, killed during World War II, was accounted for April 25, 2024.

Brown was assigned to Company F, 2nd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division in the European Theater during World War II. Shortly before midnight on New Year’s Eve 1944, German forces launched a major offensive operation in the Vosges Mountains in Alsace-Lorraine, France, known as Operation NORDWIND.

The German attack surged through Allied defenses along the Franco-German border, and the ensuing battle enveloped two U.S. Corps along a 40-mile-wide front. In the following few weeks, Company F found itself assigned to a 7-mile sector at Reipertswiller and Wildenguth, France. At some point on Jan 21, Brown was killed, but due to the intensity of the fighting his body was unable to be recovered. With no record of German forces capturing Brown, and no remains recovered, the War Department issued a “Finding of Death” in January 1946.

Beginning in 1946, the American Graves Registration Command (AGRC), the organization that searched for and recovered fallen American personnel in the European Theater, began looking for missing American personnel in the Reipertswiller area. On June 15, 1947, a French demining unit in the Obermuhlthal forest, northeast of Reiperstwiller, discovered fragmentary human remains and Pfc. Brown’s identification tag.

The recovered remains, designated X-5723 Neuville (X-5723), were analyzed, but at the time scientists were unable to make a positive identification. They were interred at the U.S. Military Cemetery at St. Avold, France, known today as Lorraine American Cemetery.

DPAA historians have been conducting in-depth research into Soldiers missing from combat around Wildenguth and Reipertswiller, and believe that the fragmentary remains comprising Unknown X-5723 could be associated with Brown. They also determined that additional remains, designated X-8046 St. Avold, could also represent portions of Brown.

In June 2021 and Aug. 2022, Department of Defense and American Battle Monuments Commission workers exhumed X-5723 and X-8046, and transferred the remains to the DPAA Laboratory for analysis.

To identify Brown’s remains, scientists from DPAA used anthropological and other circumstantial evidence. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis.

Brown’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at Epinal American Cemetery in Dinozé, France, along with others still missing from WWII. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.

Brown will be buried in Frankfort, Indiana, on Sept. 24, 2024.