Harold Dean Wirtz, age 19, from Sterling, Colorado, Logan county.
Service era: Korea
Military history: 35th Infantry Regiment
Date of death: Monday, October 30, 1950
Death details: On July 22, 1950, the 2nd Battalion of the U.S. Army’s 35th Infantry Regiment was holding defensive positions along the south bank of the rain-swollen Yong stream, south of Mun’gyong, South Korea. The battalion’s Company F was sent across the stream to reinforce a Republic of Korea (ROK) battalion on the north bank, but the ROK-U.S. position was immediately attacked by North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) forces, separating them from the rest of the 2nd Battalion and flanking Company F on both sides. Company F fell back to the stream’s edge under enemy fire, but the current was too powerful for them to cross and the enemy had seized the nearby bridge. U.S. combat engineers on the south bank attempted to launch rafts for the stranded men but were also pinned down by the NKPA until additional American tanks and infantry arrived to give them covering fire. This enabled the engineers to deploy their rafts and evacuate the men of Company F from the north bank. However, several soldiers were lost to enemy fire or while attempting to cross the swollen stream before the rafts could be launched.
Private Harold Dean Wirtz, who entered the U.S. Army from Colorado, served with F Company, 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division. He was taken as a prisoner of war (POW) while attempting to cross the Yong stream on July 22, 1950. A repatriated U.S. POW later reported that a prison guard killed Private Wirtz on October 30, 1950, and buried him nearby. His remains were not identified among those returned to the U.S. following the war, and he is still unaccounted-for. Today, Private Wirtz is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Source: National Archives, 35th Infantry Regiment Association, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency