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Pvt Shirley E. Bailey was employed at Mount Vernon Dairy. He enlisted in Huntington, West Virginia on 23 August 1943.

He was seriously wounded in France on 11 July 1944. After his release from hospital, he returned to his unit.

On 29 November 1944, when Bailey’s battalion was moving out, a German counterattack struck his company. Bailey rushed forward to aid a wounded man and was himself killed by enemy fire.

Due to the ongoing fighting, Bailey's remains were not recovered by members of his unit during the battle. After the war, the American Graves Registration Command (AGRC) collected hundreds of unknown sets of remains from battlefields in Germany, and labeled each set with an X-number. One set of remains, designated X-4734 Neuville, had been recovered from an isolated grave near Schlich, Germany, in December 1946. Medical technicians were unable to identify them in the 1940s and the remains were buried in the Ardennes American Cemetery, Neuville-en-Condroz, Belgium, as an unknown soldier.

In October 2016, DPAA researchers made a historical association between
X-4734 Neuville and Bailey, based on the recovery site of the remains and his location of loss. On June 26, 2017, X-4734 was disinterred and sent to the DPAA laboratory at Offut Air Force Base, Nebraska.

To identify Bailey's remains, scientists from DPAA and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial (mtDNA) DNA analysis, which matched his family, as well as dental and anthropological analysis, which matched his records, and material evidence.

On 20 September 2017, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced that his remains were found and identified. Interment services are pending. The family has decided that his remains will be buried at the Donel C. Kinnard Memorial State Veterans Cemetery in Dunbar, West Virginia. The funeral took place on 1 December 2017.