Woods, Roger Lee
Army Private

Roger Lee Woods, age 18, from Hamilton County Cincinnati, Ohio .

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Saturday, July 29, 1950
Death details: On May 21, 2019, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced it has accounted for the remains of Private First Class Rogers Lee Woods, missing from the Korean War. Private First Class Woods entered the U.S. Army from Ohio and was a member of I Company, 3rd Battalion, 34th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. In late July 1950, his unit was stationed in defensive positions near Kochang, South Korea, west of the Naktong River, as part of a formation soon to be known as the Pusan Perimeter. On the morning of July 29, North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) forces attacked the 3rd Battalion’s positions from two directions. The continuous enemy fire eventually forced the regiment to withdraw to the east; however, I Company was cut off, and PFC Woods was killed in this action, though the precise circumstances of his loss remain unknown. In October 1950, his remains were recovered from Kochang by the 565th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company, but were not identified at the time and were eventually interred as an unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Hawaii. In 2018, advances in forensic technology prompted the disinterment and eventual identification of PFC Woods’ remains. Private First Class Woods is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. His name is also inscribed on the Korean War Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, DC, which was updated in 2022 to include the names of the fallen.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Associated Press (1954)