Kenneth Bartlett Gibson, age 25, from Christiansburg, Virginia, Montgomery county.
Service era: Iraq
Military history: Company A, 1St Battalion, 14Th Infantry, 2 Bct, Schofield Barracks, Hi
Date of death: Sunday, August 10, 2008
Death details: Hostile; Balad, Iraq
Source: Department of Defense, Military Times
Henry Thomas Cox, age 22, from Christiansburg, Virginia, Montgomery county.
Service era: Vietnam
Date of death: Thursday, August 13, 1970
Death details: Killed in action
Source: National Archives, Danville Bee (1970)
James Earven Price, age 23, from Virginia, Montgomery county.
Service era: Korea
Date of death: Thursday, November 2, 1950
Death details: During the last week of October 1950, Republic of Korea (ROK) Army forces under the control of the U.S. Eighth Army were advancing deep in North Korean territory, approaching the Yalu River on the Chinese-Korean border. Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) struck back in a surprise attack, engaging the ROK 1st and 6th Divisions near Unsan, some sixty miles north of Pyongyang. The U.S. 1st Cavalry Division, with the 8th Cavalry Regiment in the lead, was rushed forward to reinforce the ROK units in the Unsan area. On November 1, the regiment’s 1st Battalion took up positions north of Unsan, while the 2nd Battalion moved to guard the Nammyon River valley west of town, and the 3rd Battalion was placed in reserve at the valley’s southern end. Private First Class James Earven Price, who joined the U.S. Army from Virginia, was a member of Company I, 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division. By midnight on November 1, 1950, the 8th Cavalry Regiment was forced to withdraw from the Unsan area to avoid encirclement by the enemy. The 3rd Battalion was the last to withdraw, and was surrounded and cut off by the CCF. They formed a defensive perimeter, and withstood attacks for the next few days before survivors either broke out to avoid capture or surrendered. Private First Class Price went missing in action during this battle. He was never reported as a prisoner of war, and he remains unaccounted for. Today, Private First Class Price is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
Richard N. Bean from Virginia, Montgomery county.
Service era: World War II
Date of death: Friday, July 7, 1944
Death details: On September 9, 2014, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC, now DPAA) identified the remains of Private First Class Richard N. Bean, missing from World War II. Private First Class Bean entered the U.S. Army from Virginia and served in Company D, 1st Battalion, 105th Infantry Regiment, 27th Infantry Division. On July 7, 1944, his unit was fighting on Saipan when Japanese forces launched a massive banzai attack at dawn on July 7, 1944. PFC Bean was killed when the charge broke through the American lines. The active battlefield prevented the recovery of his body at the time, and recovery efforts on Saipan conducted immediately after the war were unable to locate his remains. In 2013, a joint U.S. and Japanese investigative team recovered human remains and a military identification tag bearing PFC Bean’s name from an unmarked burial site in the vicinity of Achugao Village. These remains were brought to the JPAC lab in Hawaii where analysts were able to identify PFC Bean from them.
Cemetery: Tablets of the Missing at Honolulu Memorial
Source: National Archives, American Battle Monuments Commission; Virginia Military Dead database, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, findagrave.com
Charles M. Wilson, age 28, from Virginia, Montgomery county.
Service era: World War II
Military history: 31 Infantry Regiment
Date of death: Tuesday, July 14, 1942
Death details: Following the Allied surrender on the Bataan Peninsula on April 9, 1942, the Japanese began the forcible transfer of American and Filipino prisoners of war to various prison camps in central Luzon, at the northern end of the Philippines. The largest of these camps was the notorious Cabanatuan Prison Camp. At its peak, Cabanatuan held approximately 8,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war that were captured during and after the Fall of Bataan. Camp overcrowding worsened with the arrival of Allied prisoners who had surrendered from Corregidor on May 6, 1942. Conditions at the camp were poor, with food and water extremely limited, leading to widespread malnutrition and outbreaks of malaria and dysentery. By the time the camp was liberated in early 1945, approximately 2,800 Americans had died at Cabanatuan. Prisoners were forced to bury the dead in makeshift communal graves, often completed without records or markers. As a result, identifying and recovering remains interred at Cabanatuan was difficult in the years after the war. Private Charles M. Wilson joined the U.S. Army from Virginia and was a member of Company K, 31st Infantry Regiment in the Philippines during World War II. He was captured in Bataan following the American surrender on April 9, 1942, and died of malaria and dysentery on July 14, 1942, at the Cabanatuan Prison Camp in Nueva Ecija Province. He was buried in a communal grave in the camp cemetery along with other deceased American POWs; however, his remains could not be associated with any remains recovered from Cabanatuan after the war. Today, Private Wilson is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
John Gardner, age 27, from Christiansburg, Virginia, Montgomery county.
Service era: World War I
Date of death: Friday, November 1, 1918
Death details: Killed in action
Source: Soldiers of the Great War, findagrave.com