Milam, Charles N.
Army Private 1st class

Charles N. Milam, age 20, from Washington County Greenville, Mississippi .

Parents: Alva Overton

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Tuesday, February 1, 1944
Death details: On May 8, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of U.S. Army Pfc. Charles N. Milam, missing from World War II. Milam entered the U.S. Army from Mississippi and served as a rifleman with Company F, 7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division. From late January through late May 1944, Milam’s 3rd Infantry Division fought in the Battle of Anzio in Italy. On Jan. 31, he was reported missing during combat against German forces near the small hamlet of Ponte Rotto, close to the town of Cisterna di Latina. Members of his squad believed that he may have been killed in action by artillery at some point that day, but his body was not recovered. Having no evidence that Milam had survived the conflict, the War Department issued a presumptive finding of death on April 19, 1945. Post-war search efforts by the American Graves Registration Service failed to recover his remains and he was declared non-recoverable in 1949. As part of a comprehensive research and recovery effort focused on American soldiers missing from ground combat in Italy, DPAA historians and scientific staff recommended exhuming for new analysis a set of remains which had been recovered in July 1944 by graves registration personnel near Ponte Rotto. At the time, the American Graves Registration Service did not have enough data to positively identify the remains, which had been interred as an Unknown at the U.S. Military Cemetery Nettuno, now Sicily-Rome American Cemetery. In September 2021, this Unknown was disinterred and transported to the DPAA laboratory for forensic analysis and further study. There, the laboratory analysis, together with the total circumstantial evidence, confirmed the remains as those of Milam.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Sun Herald (1944)