Saar River 1944

Dayton Polvado, age 27, from Blanco County Round Mountain, Texas .

Parents: Edna Polvado

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Tuesday, December 12, 1944
Death details: On Oct. 10, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Dayton Polvado, missing from World War II. Polvado entered the Army from Texas and served in Company K, 3rd Battalion, 359th Infantry Regiment, 90th Infantry Division. In early December 1944, Allied forces launched offensive operations along the German frontier as part of the Lorraine Campaign. On Dec. 6, the 90th Infantry Division began a pre-dawn assault across the Saar River near Dillingen, Germany. While the 357th and 358th Infantry Regiments established positions on the eastern bank, the 359th Infantry initially remained in reserve. On Dec. 9, the regiment crossed the river to close a widening gap between adjacent units. Polvado’s battalion advanced through Pachten toward Dillingen, encountering heavy resistance from well-sited German pillboxes. On Dec. 12, 1944, Polvado was part of a platoon ordered to occupy a pillbox between Pachten and Dillingen when a German counterattack struck the position. Enemy forces temporarily overran the emplacement. When American troops later retook the area, Polvado was missing. His status was later changed from missing in action to killed in action, but his remains were not recovered at the time. Following the end of hostilities, the American Graves Registration Command conducted extensive recovery operations in the Pachten and Dillingen area. In 1946, investigators recovered five sets of remains from a small cemetery in Pachten. The remains were determined to be commingled and to represent six individuals. Two were identified, while the remaining four were designated as Unknowns and buried at the Lorraine American Cemetery. In 2021, the Department of Defense and the American Battle Monuments Commission exhumed the unknown remains associated with the Pachten cemetery and transferred them to the DPAA laboratory for analysis. There, scientists used modern forensic techniques to identify Polvado’s remains.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, San antonio Express News (1944)