Ryan, Clifford Lavern
Army Master sergeant

Clifford Lavern Ryan, age 27, from Iowa, Muscatine county.

Parents: Delmar L. Ryan
Spouse: Helen Ryan

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Wednesday, November 1, 1950
Death details: On January 22, 2011, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC, now DPAA) identified the remains of Master Sergeant Clifford Lavern Ryan, missing from the Korean War. Master Sergeant Ryan entered the U.S. Army from Iowa and served with Company B, 70th Medium Tank Battalion, attached to the 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division. On November 1, 1950, his company was supporting elements of the 1st Cavalry Division near Unsan, North Korea, north of a bend in the Kuryong River known as the “Camel’s Head Bend.” That day, Chinese Communist Forces struck the 1st Cavalry Division’s lines, collapsing the perimeter and forcing a withdrawal, and MSG Ryan did not survive this action. His body was not recovered at the time. In 2000, a joint U.S./North Korean investigative team excavated a mass grave that had been discovered in Unsan and recovered human remains, and in 2007, advances in forensic technology allowed U.S. scientists to identify MSG Ryan from these remains.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Muscatine Journal (1951)