Gresens, Rosslyn Edward
Army Corporal

Rosslyn Edward Gresens, age 32, from Aitkin County Hill City, Minnesota .

Parents: Edward Gresens

Service era: Korea
Military history: Silver Star

Date of death: Friday, August 11, 1950
Death details: The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of U.S. Army Sgt. Rosslyn Edward Gresens, missing from the Korean War on Feb. 28, 2025. Gresens entered the Army from Minnesota and served in B Company, 3rd Engineer Combat Battalion, 24th Infantry Division. On Aug. 11, 1950, twenty members of B Company conducted a reconnaissance patrol across the Naktong River to investigate North Korean activity near Chang-dong. After crossing to the west bank and completing their reconnaissance, the patrol came under heavy enemy fire and withdrew toward the river, sustaining severe losses. Only five men ultimately returned to friendly lines. Gresens was last seen in a rice paddy providing covering fire during the withdrawal. With no evidence of his continued survival, and no reports of imprisonment from repatriated prisoners of war, the U.S. Army issued a presumptive finding of death on Dec. 31, 1950. In December 1951, a team from the 565th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company recovered several sets of remains on the west side of the Naktong River, near the villages of Yon-dong and P’odu-ri. One set believed to be American was transferred to the United Nations Military Cemetery at Tanggok before being sent to the Central Identification Unit in Kokura, Japan, for analysis. The remains could not be identified and, in February 1956, were interred as an Unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. On July 7, 2021, as part of DPAA’s Korean War Disinterment Project, these remains were disinterred from the cemetery and accessioned into a DPAA Laboratory for analysis. There, scientists used modern forensic techniques to identify Gresens. He 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, D.C., which was updated in 2022 to include the names of the fallen.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Minneapolis Star (1950)