Mares, Charlie John
Army Major sergeant

Charlie John Mares, age 29, from Fayette County Waelder, Texas .

Parents: Cyril J. Mares

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Monday, July 31, 1950
Death details: On February 4, 2019, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Master Sergeant Charlie John Mares, missing from the Korean War. Master Sergeant Mares, who joined the U.S. Army from Texas, was a member of C Company, 1st Battalion, 34th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. On July 31, 1950, he was killed by enemy fire while supporting the defensive positions near Kwonbin-ni, South Korea, west of the Naktong River. In May 1951, the American Graves Registration Service recovered several sets of human remains from the area of MSG Mares’s loss. These remains were sent to the Central Identification Unit in Kokura, Japan for analysis, some of which could not be identified at the time and were buried as “unknowns” at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii. In 2018, one set of “unknowns” was disinterred by DPAA analysts who, using historical unit data and modern forensic technology, were able to identify these remains as those of MSG Mares. Master Sergeant Mares 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, Paris News (1964)