Hickman County Tennessee

James Harold Lynch, age 33, from Hickman County Aetna, Tennessee .

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Monday, January 8, 1951
Death details: By 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, located the farthest north of units at the Chongchon River, could not halt the CCF advance and was ordered to withdraw to defensive positions at Sunchon in the South Pyongan province of North Korea. As the division pulled back from Kunu-ri toward Sunchon, it conducted an intense rearguard action while fighting to break through well-defended roadblocks set up by CCF infiltrators. The withdrawal was not complete until December 1, and the 2nd Infantry Division suffered extremely heavy casualties in the process. Sergeant James H. Lynch, who entered the U.S. Army from Tennessee, was serving with the Medical Company of the 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division at the time of the Chinese offensive. He was captured by enemy forces during the course of the fighting withdrawal, and, along with a number of other prisoners, was moved to the ‘Mining Camp’ prison facility in the Pukchin-Tarigol valley. Many prisoners were lost to disease or exposure at this camp. Sergeant Lynch died on or around January 8, 1951. The site of the ‘Mining Camp’ is within the borders of modern-day North Korea, and Sergeant Lynch’s remains are not among those that have been returned from this site by the North Koreans. Today, Sergeant Lynch is memorialized in the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Commercial Appeal (1953)