Name: Earnest E Brown
First Name(s): Earnest E
Last Name: Brown
Place of birth: Virginia, Bristol City, Bristol
Rank: Pfc BAR Gunner
ASN: 33843369
Company: B
Unit: 394th IR 1stBn 99th ID
Reported as: MIA ► FOD
Date of incident: 15-01-1945
Place of incident: Elsenbüchel Forest
His story: On January 15, 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge, Pfc Earnest E Brown and Sgt John T Puckett were searching for German soldiers in a wooded area near Elsenborn, Belgium. They were ambushed and came under intense enemy machine gun and mortar fire. Eyewitnesses indicated they were killed, but their bodies could not be recovered due to enemy activity. Following the war, remains of American soldiers were recovered and identified on January 16, 1946, but not those of Puckett and Brown.
Then on July 21, 1992, two Belgian nationals who were part of a MIA project located and excavated an abandoned fighting position in the forest east of Elsenborn. They recovered remains and other evidence and turned them over to U.S. authorities in Germany, Europe.
In the spring of 2001 Scientists of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL) used mitochondrial DNA as one of the forensic tools to identify the remains as those of Puckett and Brown.
By the time the remains of Pfc Brown were definitive identified, his wife and children had passed away. He only had one surviving brother, who aranged and attended together with Brown’s grand dauthter his funeral in 2005.
Extra Link(s)
NARA
HONOR field
HONOR state
ENLISTMENT
BURIAL
MEMORIAL
