USA — Soldier Missing In Action from World War I Identified

The Depart­ment of Defense POW/Missing Per­son­nel Office announced today that the remains of a ser­vice­man, miss­ing in action from World War I, have been iden­ti­fied and returned to his fam­i­ly for bur­ial with full mil­i­tary hon­ors.

Army Pvt. Thomas D. Costel­lo of New York, N.Y., will be buried on July 12 at Arling­ton Nation­al Cemetery. 

On Sept. 16, 1918, as part of the 60th Infantry Reg­i­ment, 1st Brigade, 5th Infantry Divi­sion, Costel­lo encoun­tered heavy ene­my artillery bar­rage and machine gun fire near Jaulny, France, in a wood­ed area known as Bois de Bon­va­ux. He was killed dur­ing the bat­tle and his remains were buried with two oth­er sol­diers in a wood­ed area between Bois de Bon­va­ux and Bois de Grand Fontaine. 

Attempts to locate Costello’s remains by Army Graves Reg­is­tra­tion per­son­nel fol­low­ing the war were unsuc­cess­ful. In Sep­tem­ber 2006, French nation­als hunt­ing for met­al in the area found human remains and World War I arti­facts. A Joint POW/MIA Account­ing Com­mand team, oper­at­ing near the loca­tion, was noti­fied of the dis­cov­ery and recov­ered human remains upon exca­vat­ing the site. 

Among oth­er foren­sic iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tools and cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence, sci­en­tists from the JPAC lab­o­ra­to­ry also used den­tal com­par­isons in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the remains. 

For addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion on the Defense Department’s mis­sion to account for miss­ing Amer­i­cans, vis­it the DPMO Web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call 703–699-1169.

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs)