Memorial

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Sgt Bernard J. Sweeney Jr. was employed at Scoville Manufacturing Company in Waterbury, Connecticut.

He enlisted in New York City, New York on 27 November 1942 and he joined his unit from the 41st Replacement Battalion on 2 August 1944.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced that Sgt. Sweeney was accounted for on 14 June 2021.

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 recover or identify Sweeney’s remains. He was declared non-recoverable in November 1951.

While studying unresolved American losses in the Hürtgen area, a DPAA historian determined that one set of unidentified remains, designated X-2752 Neuville, recovered from a minefield north of Kleinhau, Germany, in 1946 possibly belonged to Sweeney. The remains, which had been buried in Ardennes American Cemetery in 1950, were disinterred in April 2019 and sent to the DPAA laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, for identification.

To identify Sweeney’s remains, scientists from DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis, as well as circumstantial evidence. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome DNA (Y-STR) analysis.

Sweeney’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at Netherlands American Cemetery, an American Battle Monuments Commission site in Margraten, the Netherlands, along with the others still missing from World War II. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.

Sgt Sweeney has been given his final resting place at Calverton National Cemetery on 10 October 2023.