A Chicago soldier was killed in a World War II attack on New Year’s Eve 1944. He was finally brought to justice.

On Thursday, military authorities announced that they had found a 19-year-old soldier who died during World War II.

U.S. Army soldier Jeremiah P. Maroney was assigned during the war to an anti-tank company in Europe, the POW/MIA Defense Accounting Agency – wrote in the press release. Maroney was from Chicago and was part of the 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division.

Shortly before midnight on New Year’s Eve 1944, German forces launched a major offensive in the Alsace-Lorraine mountains of France, punching through Allied defenses along the French-German border, U.S. officials say. The offensive turned into a massive battle stretching for more than 40 miles. The battle raged for weeks, with Mahoney’s unit resupplying and reinforcing his regiment near the French village of Reipertswiller.

On January 17, 1945, Mahoney was killed in combat. His body could not be recovered, and a year later the War Department issued a “Declaration of Death”.

In 1946, the U.S. Grave Registration Command began a search for missing American personnel in the area where Mahoney was last seen. In August 1947, department employees found a collection of remains in the forest near Reipertswiller. The bodies and the clothes and equipment found with them were analyzed, but they could not be identified. The remains were buried as “unknown” in the Ardennes American Cemetery in Belgium, and his name was written on the wall of the missing in the Epinal American Cemetery in France.

Decades later, the DPAA began an investigation into the missing soldiers who died in the Reipertswiller area. They believed the unknown remains could be Mahoney’s. In August 2022, the remains were exhumed and transferred to the DPAA Laboratory for analysis. Scientists have used many forms DNA testing, as well as anthropological and circumstantial evidence to examine the remains.

On May 6, 2024, DPAA positively identified the remains as those of Mahoney.

A rosette was placed next to his name on the Walls of the Missing to indicate that he had been accounted for. His remains will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery on a date to be determined, DPAA said.