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Pvt Jeremiah P. Mahoney was officially declared death one year and one day after he went missing and was presumed death.

At that time his unit was fighting in the vicinity of Mouterhouse, France.

Shortly before midnight on New Year’s Eve 1944, German forces launched a major offensive, known as Operation NORDWIND, in the Vosges Mountains in Alsace-Lorraine, France. The German attack surged through Allied defenses along the Franco-German border, and the ensuing battle enveloped two U.S. Corps along a 40-mile-wide front. In the following few weeks, Anti-Tank Company resupplied and reinforced the 157th Infantry Regiment near the village of Reipertswiller. At some point on 17 January 1945 Mahoney was killed, but due to the intensity of the fighting his unit could not recover his body as it was forced to withdraw from the area. With no record of German forces capturing Mahoney, and no remains recovered, the War Department issued a “Finding of Death” in January 1946.

Beginning in 1946, the American Graves Registration Command (AGRC), the organization that searched for and recovered fallen American personnel in the European Theater, began looking for missing American personnel in the Reipertswiller area. In August 1947, graves registration personnel recovered a set of remains, which they designated X-6379 Neuville (X-6379), from the Reipertswiller Forest. Analysts assessed the remains, along with clothing and equipment recovered with the body, but they were unable to identify X-6379. In 1949, the AGRC interred the Unknown in Ardennes American Cemetery).

DPAA historians have been conducting in-depth research into Soldiers missing from combat around Wildenguth and Reipertswiller, and believe that Unknown X-6379 could be associated with Mahoney. Department of Defense and American Battle Monuments Commission workers exhumed X-6379 in August 2022 and transferred the remains to the DPAA Laboratory for analysis.

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

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

Pvt Mahoney will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, on a date to be determined (information added November 2024).