PVT. Charles W. Smalley Jr.

A Graveside Service honoring PVT. Charles W. Smalley Jr. will be held on Saturday, June 21, 2025 at 10 a.m. at Chesterton Cemetery. Professional arrangements are entrusted to White-Love Funeral Home, Chesterton, IN. Www.whitelovefuneralhome.com

Service Member

PVT. CHARLES W SMALLEY JR.

On January 14, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Pvt. Charles W. Smalley Jr. missing from World War II.

Smalley entered the U.S. Army from Indiana and served in Company L, 3rd Battalion, 141st Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division. After the successful “D-Day” landings on the Normandy beaches, Allied commanders implemented a plan for an invasion in southern France, code-named Operation DRAGOON. On August 25, Smalley’s unit’s objective was to repel German forces from a mountain between Marsanne and the village of La Coucourde. An eyewitness reported that he was killed by machine gun fire during the first 10 minutes of the attack. In 1946, the American Graves Registration Command, the organization that searched for and recovered fallen American personnel in the European Theater, searched the Marsanne and La Coucourde area for Smalley and others still unaccounted-for from the attack, but did not uncover any leads. On April 16, 1951, Smalley was declared non-recoverable. On September 6, 1944, members of the 46th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company had unearthed a set of unidentified remains from a secluded grave located on a wooded ridge north of Montélimar, France. The remains had been taken to a temporary U.S. Military Cemetery in Montélimar and relocated to the USMC Luynes near Marseille, France in November 1945. Efforts to identify the remains were unsuccessful and they were buried as an Unknown. In March 2023, based on on-going research by DPAA historians focused on soldiers missing from Operation DRAGOON and the campaign in southern France, this Unknown was exhumed and transferred to the DPAA Laboratory for further study. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established an association between the unknown remains and Smalley.

He is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at Rhône American Cemetery, Draguignan, France.

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