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Pfc Groh attended high school for four years and was a clock maker.

He enlisted at Camp Perry, Ohio on 15 March 1943.

He was officially declared dead one day and one year after he was reported missing in action.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced today that Pfc. William L. Groh was accounted for on 9 July 2021.

In November 1944, Groh was assigned to Company F, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. His unit was part of the Hürtgen Forest offensive, near Hürtgen, Germany, when he was reported wounded in action on 13 November. This was also the last day his unit saw him. German forces never listed him as a prisoner of war. The War Department issued a presumptive finding of death on 14 November 1945.

Following the end of the war, the American Graves Registration Command (AGRC) 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 Groh’s remains. He was declared non-recoverable in September 1951.

While studying unresolved American losses in the Hürtgen area, a DPAA historian determined that one set of unidentified remains, designated X-5437 Neuville, originally discovered by a German forester and recovered by the AGRC in 1947, possibly belonged to Groh.

The remains were found, unburied in a by mines and artillery destroyed part of the forest.

The remains, which had been buried in Ardennes American Cemetery, were disinterred in April 2019 and sent to the DPAA laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, for examination and identification.

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

Groh’s name is recorded on the Tablets of the Missing at Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery, an American Battle Monuments Commission site in Hombourg, Belgium, 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.

Groh will be buried in Phoenix, Arizona. The date has yet to be determined (April 2022)