Jinks, Leonard William Elmer
Army Private 1st class

Leonard William Elmer Jinks from Indiana, Ripley county.

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Sunday, July 16, 1950
Death details: On the evening of July 15, 1950, the U.S. Army’s 19th Infantry Regiment held defensive positions along the south bank of the Kum River. As dusk approached, North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) tanks appeared on the opposite shore and began firing on the U.S. positions. Although U.S. troops repulsed the attacks that evening, the next morning the NKPA crossed the river and launched a major attack against the 19th Regiment. As the regiment began withdrawing south to Taejon, the North Koreans pushed deep into their defensive lines and set up a roadblock en route to Taejon. When retreating American convoys could not break through the roadblock, soldiers were forced to leave the road and attempt to make their way in small groups across the countryside. Of the 900 soldiers in the 19th Infantry when the Battle of Kum River started, only 434 made it to friendly lines. Corporal Leonard William Elmer Jinks entered the U.S. Army from Indiana and served with Company C, 1st Battalion, 19th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. He went missing on July 16, during the Battle of Kum River, while his unit was attempting to withdraw through and around an enemy roadblock outside Taejon. While CPL Jinks was never reported as a prisoner of war (POW), reliable records indicate that his name was referenced in a North Korean propaganda broadcast as being a POW. Additionally, men captured during this action were marched to various holding camps in North Korea, and as Allied forces subsequently retook territory, blackboards with prisoners’ names recorded onto them were found in abandoned school houses along the POW march routes. Corporal Jinks’ name, although somewhat garbled, was found on one of the blackboards. Additionally, one man who was captured but managed to escape reported seeing CPL Jinks among his fellow prisoners and still alive on October 14. He remains unaccounted for. Today, Corporal Jinks is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency