Remains of Pfc. Richard Summers of WV identified; burial date pending

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WVVA) – The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced that U.S. Army Pfc. Richard P. Summers, 19, of Parkersburg, West Virginia, who was killed during World War II, was accounted for on September 10th, 2025.

Summers’s family has received a full briefing on his identification, and officials have released additional details with the family’s permission. Summers was assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion, 180th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division. He was reportedly killed in action Jan. 6, 1945, while his unit was on patrol near Wildenguth, France. The Germans did not report Summers as a prisoner of war and his remains were not immediately recovered.

Between July 1947 and July 1950, the American Graves Registration Command searched the Wildenguth area and recovered four sets of unknown remains. One set, designated X-5571 Neuville, was recovered from the Wildenguth Forest and interred at the U.S. Military Cemetery Neuville-en-Condroz in Belgium.

In August 2022 the Department of Defense and the American Battle Monuments Commission exhumed Unknown X-5571 Neuville from the Ardennes American Cemetery and transferred the remains to the DPAA Laboratory for analysis. To confirm Summers’s identity, DPAA scientists used dental and anthropological analysis as well as circumstantial evidence. The Armed Forces Medical Examiner System contributed mitochondrial DNA analysis and nuclear single nucleotide polymorphism testing.

Summers’s name appears on the Walls of the Missing at Epinal American Cemetery in Dinozé, France. A rosette will be placed beside his name to indicate he has been accounted for. Burial arrangements will be announced at a later date.

Family and funeral inquiries may be directed to the Army Casualty Office at (800) 892-2490. For more on DPAA’s mission to account for missing service members, visit this website.

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