WASHINGTON — A soldier from Battle Creek who was killed during World War II has been accounted for.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) says 24-year-old U.S. Army Pfc. Lowell D. Smith was killed on Jan. 21, 1945. They say his unit, Company F, 2nd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division, attacked German soldiers in Reipertswiller, France, in an effort to free other battalions when the company took heavy fire.
Company F withdrew and later regrouped but Smith had gone missing, DPPA explains.
Several months later, German records acquired by the U.S. Army revealed that Smith had died shortly after the attack, defense officials say.
Smith was deemed non-recoverable in 1951.
Decades later, historians learned of a set of unidentified remains interred at Lorraine American Cemetery in France, DPPA recounts. The remains were exhumed and analyzed at a DPAA lab in Nebraska.
The remains were confirmed to belong to Smith in June 2022, DPAA tells us.
We’re told Smith will be laid to rest in Augusta at a later time but an exact date has not been set.
