William Smith Caldwell from Riverside County Banning, California .
Service era: Korea
Date of death: Unknown
Death details: By mid-November 1950, U.S. and Allied forces had advanced to within approximately sixty miles of the Yalu River, the border between North Korea and China. On November 25, approximately 300,000 Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) “volunteers” suddenly and fiercely counterattacked after crossing the Yalu. The 2nd Infantry Division, located the farthest north of units at the Chongchon River, could not halt the CCF advance and was ordered to withdraw to defensive positions at Sunchon in the South Pyongan province of North Korea. As the division pulled back from Kunu-ri toward Sunchon, it conducted an intense rearguard action while fighting to break through well-defended roadblocks set up by CCF infiltrators. The withdrawal was not complete until December 1, and the 2nd Infantry Division suffered extremely heavy casualties in the process. Corporal William Smith Caldwell, who joined the U.S. Army from California, served with Battery A, 82nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. He was taken prisoner of war on December 1, 1950, as his unit provided direct fire support to 2nd Infantry Division troops during its withdrawal from Kunu-ri to Sunchon, North Korea. After his capture, he was marched to a holding camp in the Pukchin Tarigol Valley where he died of malnutrition in late January or early February 1951. His remains were not recovered at the time, and he has not been identified among those returned to U.S. custody since the ceasefire. Today, Corporal Caldwell is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. His name is also inscribed on the Korean War Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, DC, which was updated in 2022 to include the names of the fallen.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, The Californian (1951)