Levesque, Norman Ronald
Army Private 1st Class

Norman Ronald Levesque, age 18, from Bristol County Tauton, Massachusetts .

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Friday, August 11, 1950
Death details: On September 8, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of U.S. Army Cpl. Norman Ronald Levesque, missing from the Korean War. Levesque entered the Army from Massachusetts and was a member of Battery C, 15th Field Artillery Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. On Aug. 10, 1950, members of Levesque’s Battery C of the 15th Field Artillery Battalion combined with 3rd Battalion of the 9th Infantry Regiment as Task Force Bradley. The task force was directed to defend the city of P’ohang-dong, and Yonil Airfield, South Korea, from an impending attack by North Korean People’s army (NKPA) forces. Late that day, Task Force Bradley moved along the main road toward P’ohang-dong and Yonil. Much of the task force reached Yonil shortly before midnight; however, during the early hours of Aug. 11, NKPA fighters ambushed one company and four vehicles from Battery C, preventing the unit’s men from reaching their destination. Following the ambush, Levesque was reported missing in action on August 11, 1950. In 1954, as part of Operation Glory, the United Nations Command, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and the Chinese People’s Volunteer army exchanged the remains of war dead. However, none of the Operation Glory remains could be positively associated with Levesque using the forensic tools at the time. In 1956, all unidentified Korean War remains were transferred to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP) and buried as Unknowns. On March 26, 2018, as part of DPAA’s Korean War Disinterment Plan, one such Unknown was exhumed from the NMCP and sent to a DPAA laboratory for further study. There, based on the laboratory analysis and total circumstantial evidence, the previously unidentified remains were found to be those of Levesque. 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, DC, which was updated in 2022 to include the names of the fallen.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, The Standard Times (1954)