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Pfc Mose E Vance enlisted in Huntington, West Virginia on 16 October 1943.

Shortly before midnight on New Year’s Eve 1944, German forces launched a major offensive operation in the Vosges Mountains in Alsace-Lorraine, France, known as Operation NORDWIND. 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, Company F found itself assigned to a 7-mile sector at Reipertswiller and Wildenguth, France. At some point on 11 January, Pfc Vance was killed, but due to the intensity of the fighting his body was unable to be recovered. With no record of German forces capturing Vance, and no remains recovered, the War Department issued a “Report of Death” in December 1945.

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. At the time, they were able to recover numerous sets of remains, one of which was designated X-6904 St. Avold (X-6904). Because the remains could not be identified, they were interred in 1949 at the U.S. Military Cemetery at St. Avold, France, known today as Lorraine American Cemetery.

DPAA historians have been conducting in-depth research into Soldiers missing from combat around Wildenguth and Reipertswiller, and believe that Unknown X-6904 could be associated with PFC Vance. Department of Defense and American Battle Monuments Commission workers exhumed X-6904 in August 2022 and transferred the remains to the DPAA Laboratory for analysis.

To identify Vance’s remains, scientists from DPAA used anthropological and other circumstantial evidence. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis.

Pfc Vance’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.
PFC Vance will be buried in Paynesville, West Virginia, on a date to be determined (information added June 2024).

He is also remembered at the Vance Cemetery in Bradshaw, West Virginia.