The remains of a United States Army soldier from Waterbury who was killed during World War II will be buried on Tuesday in New York.
Army Sgt. Bernard J. Sweeney Jr., a native of Waterbury, was 22 years old when he died. The U.S. Army Human Resources Command identified him a couple of years ago.
Sweeney was assigned to Company I, 330th Infantry Regiment, 83rd Infantry Division and his unit was in battle with German forces near Strass, Germany, in the Hürtgen Forest, when he was reported missing in action on Dec. 16. 1944.
The American Graves Registration Command conducted several investigations in the Hürtgen area between 1946 and 1950, but they were unable to recover or identify Sweeney’s remains.
Get Connecticut local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Connecticut newsletters.
As the years went on, a historian with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency determined that one set of unidentified remains that had been recovered from a minefield north of Kleinhau, Germany in 1946 and buried in Ardennes American Cemetery in 1950 possibly belonged to Sweeney.
The remains were disinterred in April 2019 and sent to a laboratory in Nebraska for identification.
Three years later, Sweeney was accounted for through “circumstantial evidence” and DNA.
Local
Sweeney’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands and a rosette will be placed next to it to show he has been accounted for.
Sweeney will be interred on Oct. 10 at Calverton National Cemetery, Wading River, New York.
Learn more about Sgt. Sweeney online here.
