White, Delbert Lloyd
Army Private 1st class

Delbert Lloyd White, age 20, from Davis County Belknap, Iowa .

Parents: Darlene E. White

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Sunday, March 18, 1951
Death details: On September 27, 2022, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Corporal Delbert Lloyd White, missing from the Korean War. Corporal White entered the U.S. Army from Iowa and served in D Company, 2nd Engineer (Combat) Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. In 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 could not halt the CCF advance and was ordered to withdraw to defensive positions farther south. As the division pulled back from Kunu-ri toward Sunchon, it conducted an intense rearguard action and suffered heavy casualties. CPL White was captured by enemy forces on December 1, 1950. He and other prisoners were marched northward to Camp 5, Pyoktong, North Korea, where he died of malnutrition on March 18, 1951. During Operation GLORY, the postwar exchange of war dead, remains from burial grounds around POW Camp 5 were returned to United Nations Command. The majority were identified, but 38 sets of remains could not be. Those remains were buried as Unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. In October 2019, as part of a planned exhumation of Project GLORY burials originating from Camp 5, one set of remains was disinterred and sent to a DPAA laboratory for further study. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established the remains as those of CPL White.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Ames Daily Tribune (1951)