Mary Alice Reporting –
A World War II service man who was killed and missing in action will return to his hometown of Freeport on September 21st.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency notified that Harold Dean Pittis has been accounted for following fierce fighting near the town of Beiersdorg (buyers-dorf), Germany, where he was killed in action but unable to be recovered. Remains were recovered in 1951 and interred at the US Military Cemetery in Tunisia.
Sgt. 1st Class Sean Everette explains that with more than 72,000 from WW II still labeled as missing, to identify someone and return them home confirms the agency’s mission.
“It’s our job to do the research and find them and then we go out and we actually go to recover their bodies. We believe there are somewhere around, we don’t have an actual number, but 38,000 who are potentially still recoverable.”
Pittis was 21 when he joined the military in 1942, and three years later the US Army Technician Fifth Grade was assigned to Company G, 2nd Battalion, 318th Regiment, 80th Infantry Division. He was killed on February 8, 1945.
DNA from surviving family was collected in 2017 and the positive match was announced to Pittis’s sister in July 2024. Pittis will be buried in Greenmont Cemetery on Freeport-Tippecanoe Road, at 1pm, with Military Honors performed. Social time will follow the service at the Freeport Fire House.
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