Name: John T Puckett
First Name(s): John T
Last Name: Puckett
Place of birth: Kansas, Sedgwick Cnty, Wichita
Rank: Sgt Rifle Squad Leader
ASN: 17082911
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, Sgt John T Puckett and Pfc Earnest E Brown and 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.
Joann Bowman, sister of John Puckett, decided to inter her brother in Belgium at the Ardennes American Cemetery. On June 18, 2005, thirteen years after the recovery, Sgt Puckett’s remains returned to Belgium.
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