William F. Delaney, age 24, from Tennessee, Roane county.
Service era: World War II
Date of death: Friday, November 24, 1944
Death details: On December 17, 2018, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced it identified the remains of Private First Class William F. Delaney, missing from World War II. Private First Class Delaney, who joined the U.S. Army from Tennessee, and was a member of Company A, 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. On November 22, 1944, his battalion launched an attack against a large pocket of German defenders near the town of Grosshau, Germany during the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest. An enemy artillery shell struck a foxhole where PFD Delaney was taking cover and critically wounded him. He died before he could be evacuated and his body was not immediately recovered. After the war, an American Graves Registration Command search team recovered a set of remains from a nearby forest where civilians had found the body of a soldier killed by an artillery shell. These remains could not be identified and were interred as unknowns. In June of 2017, these remains were exhumed and analyzed using modern forensic tools leading to their identification as those of Private First Class Delaney.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency