WASHINGTON –
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced today that Army Pfc. Oliver Jeffers, 31, of Huntsville, Tennessee, killed during World War II, was accounted for April 23, 2020.
In November 1944, Jeffers was assigned to Company L, 3rd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. His unit was engaged in battle with German forces near Germeter, Germany, in the Hürtgen Forest, when he was killed in action on Nov. 10. Jeffers could not be recovered because of the on-going fighting.
Following the end of the war, the American Graves Registration Command was tasked with investigating and recovering missing American personnel in Europe. They conducted several investigations in the Hürtgen area between 1946 and 1950, but were unable to recover or identify Jeffers’ remains. He was declared non-recoverable in 1951.
While studying unresolved American losses in the Hürtgen area, a DPAA historian determined that one set of unidentified remains, designated X-2735 Neuville, recovered from a minefield near Germeter in 1946 possibly belonged to Jeffers. The remains, which had been buried in Ardennes American Cemetery in 1950, were disinterred in April 2018 and sent to the DPAA laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, for identification.
To identify Jeffers’s remains, scientists from DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis, as well as circumstantial evidence. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis.
Jeffers’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 the others still missing from World War II. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.
Jeffers will be buried Oct. 7, 2020, in his hometown.
For family and funeral information, contact the Army Casualty Office at (800) 892-2490.
DPAA is grateful to the American Battle Monuments Commission and to the U.S. Army Regional Mortuary-Europe/Africa for their partnership in this mission.
For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for Americans who went missing while serving our country, visit the DPAA website at www.dpaa.mil, find us on social media at www.facebook.com/dodpaa or call (703) 699-1420/1193.
Jeffers’s personnel profile can be viewed at https://dpaa.secure.force.com/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt0000000BT3kEAG.