Richmond California

Hoyle Trentun Riddle, age 38, from Contra Costa County Richmond, California .

Spouse: Ola Riddle. She learned about her husband’s death when an ex-POW told her: “We buried him.” He told her her husband wandered out into the snow from his POW camp mud hut. Apparently he was crazed from hunger, and froze to death.

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Friday, November 30, 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 First Class Hoyle Trenton Riddle, who joined the U.S. Army from California, served with Headquarters, Headquarters and Service Company, 2nd Engineer Combat Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. He was captured by enemy forces on November 30, 1950, as his unit withdrew from Kunu-ri to Sunchon. He was marched with other prisoners of war to the Pukchin-Tarigol Valley, North Korea, where he died late December 1950, from pneumonia. He was buried at Pukchin-Tarigol, but his remains have not been recovered. Sergeant First Class Riddle is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency