Coon, Ellis
Army Sergeant

Ellis Coon from Pike County Mississippi.

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Wednesday, February 14, 1951
Death details: By mid-November 1950, U.S. and Allied forces had advanced to within approximately sixty miles of the Yalu River, the border between North Korea and China. On November 25, approximately 300,000 Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) “volunteers” suddenly and fiercely counterattacked after crossing the Yalu. The 2nd Infantry Division, located the farthest north of units at the Chongchon River, could not halt the CCF advance and was ordered to withdraw to defensive positions at Sunchon in the South Pyongan province of North Korea. As the division pulled back from Kunu-ri toward Sunchon, it conducted an intense rearguard action while fighting to break through well-defended roadblocks set up by CCF infiltrators. The withdrawal was not complete until December 1, and the 2nd Infantry Division suffered extremely heavy casualties in the process. Sergeant First Class Ellis Coon, who joined the U.S. Army from Michigan, was a member of Battery C, 503rd Field Artillery Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. He was captured during the fighting withdrawal from the Kunu-ri area on December 1, 1950. He was marched to Camp 5, a prison camp on the bank of the Yalu River in Pyoktong, North Korea, where he died of malnutrition on February 14, 1951. His remains were not recovered, and he was not identified among the remains returned to U.S. custody after the war. Today, Sergeant First Class Coon is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, McComb Enterprise Journal (1998)