Memorial

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T/Sgt Matthew L. Mc Keon attended Euclid Shore High School and was employed by the Park Drop Forge Company.

He enlisted in Cleveland, Ohio on 7 May 1943.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced on 16 March 2023 that T/Sgt Matthew L. McKeon was accounted for on 12 January 2023.

Following the end of the war, the American Graves Registration Command was tasked with investigating and recovering missing American personnel in Europe. They conducted several investigations in the Hürtgen area between 1946 and 1950 but were unable to identify Mc Keon’s remains. He was declared nonrecoverable on 15 December 1950.

While studying unresolved American losses in the Hürtgen area, a DPAA historian determined that one set of unidentified remains, designated X-4458 Neuville, recovered near the town of Hürtgen in November 1946 possibly belonged to a service member missing from combat in November 1944, such as Mc Keon. These remains were discovered unburied in a foxhole in the woods north of Hürtgen by members of a German demining company.

The remains, which had been buried in Ardennes American Cemetery in 1950, were disinterred in June 2021 and sent to the DPAA laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, for identification.

To identify Mc Keon’s remains, scientists from DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), Y chromosome (Y-STR), and autosomal DNA (auSTR) analysis.

Mc Keon’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at Margraten Cemetery. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.

T/Sgt Mc Keon was buried on 23 May 2023 at Miramar National Cemetery in San Diego, California.