11/18/2023
MIA PFC Henry C Wade has been Missing In Action for 79 years and is finally coming home to the Lexington Bluegrass Airport @ 1:21 pm arrival time on November 18, 2023. Staging is at Gate 5 off of Aviation Museum Road @ Lexington Bluegrass Airport. Please arrive no later than 1:00 pm at the staging area.
We are honored to es**rt you home to Russell Springs, KY
On May 11, 2023, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Private First Class Henry C. Wade, missing from World War II.
Private First Class Wade entered the U.S. Army from Kentucky and was a member of Company K, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division, which took part in the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest. On November 12, 1944, he was killed in action near Germeter, Germany, while his unit was engaged against enemy forces near the Germeter-Hürtgen Road. Due to the heavy fighting his remains could not be immediately recovered. In December 1951, he was declared non-recoverable by the U.S. Army. In 2019, a DPAA historian analyzed American Graves Registration Command (AGRC) reports regarding one set of unidentified remains recovered from the Hürtgen Forest in 1946. German personnel found the remains while clearing landmines from the forest and reported them to American authorities. The remains were found on the ground surface and had no identification tags or other items to indicate the Soldier’s name, however, the AGRC team concluded that the remains belonged to an American Soldier based on the clothing the individual was wearing. A map of the recovery location indicated that three other sets of remains associated with Company K losses were located in the same vicinity. The AGRC transferred the found set of remains to the Central Identification Point at Neuville, Belgium, for processing. However, the remains were not able to be scientifically identified, and were interred in what is now the Ardennes American Cemetery in Neuville-en-Condroz, Belgium, in 1949. In June 2021, based on analysis of AGRS reports done by the DPAA historian, this unknown set of remains was disinterred and sent to the DPAA laboratory for identification. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established the remains as those of PFC Wade.
Private First Class Wade is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten.