Pfc. George Armand Curley Jr. – Accounted For After 74 Years

U.S. Army Private First Class George Armand Curley Jr., 18, of Laconia, New Hampshire, who was killed during the Korean War, has been officially accounted for as of March 3, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced.

Curley entered the U.S. Army from New Hampshire and was assigned to Headquarters and Service Company, 2nd Engineer Combat Battalion, part of the 2nd Infantry Division. In November 1950, during the bitter retreat from the Ch’ongch’on River, Curley’s unit attempted to fight through a heavily defended enemy roadblock near Kunu-Ri, North Korea. He was reported missing in action on November 30, 1950, in the vicinity of Sonchu, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Later reports from repatriated American POWs confirmed that Curley had been captured by Chinese forces and taken to Camp 5, part of the Pyoktong POW camp cluster near the Yalu River. According to these accounts, he died in captivity in February or March 1951. He was likely buried near the camp, but his remains were not recovered or identified following the Korean War.

In 1954, as part of Operation GLORY, the United Nations Command and Chinese Communist Forces exchanged the remains of war dead. These remains were processed by the Central Identification Unit (CIU) at Kokura, Japan, but none could be positively identified as Curley. One of the unidentified remains, designated Unknown X-14692, was eventually interred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (Punchbowl) in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1956, along with other unidentified Korean War casualties.

In July 2018, the DPAA initiated a plan to disinter 652 Korean War Unknowns from the Punchbowl for identification. On November 18, 2019, as part of Phase Two of the Korean War Disinterment Plan, Unknown X-14692 was exhumed and transferred to the DPAA laboratory for analysis.

Using a combination of anthropological and dental analysis, chest radiograph comparison, and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and genome sequence analysis conducted by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, scientists were able to positively identify the remains as those of Pfc. George A. Curley Jr.

Curley’s name had long been inscribed on the Courts of the Missing at the Punchbowl and on the Korean War Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., which was updated in 2022 to include the names of all fallen service members. Following the identification, a rosette will be placed next to his name on the Courts of the Missing to indicate that he has been accounted for.

Curley’s family has received a full briefing on the identification, bringing closure to a decades-long chapter of sacrifice and remembrance.