William Harrison Curran, age 25, from Johnson County Salus, Arkansas .
Spouse: Gisela E. Curran
Service era: Korea
Date of death: Friday, December 1, 1950
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 First Class William Harrison Curran, who joined the U.S. Army from Arkansas, served with the Headquarters Battery, 82nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. He went missing in action on December 1, 1950, as his unit provided direct fire support to 2nd Infantry Division troops as they withdrew from Kunu-ri to Sunchon, North Korea. No one saw him fall, and he was not reported to be a prisoner of war. The area where he went missing never returned to Allied control so no searches were conducted for him, and his remains were not identified among those returned to U.S. custody after the war. Today, Sergeant First Class Curran 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, Northwest Arkansas Times (1951)
