Worley Donald Jacks

Pfc Worley D. Jacks enlisted at Fort Thomas Newport, Kentucky on 25 May 1944. | | According to witnesses from his platoon he was severely wounded by shrapnel, his left wrist was traumatically amputated, one leg was broken and the other severely cut. The medical aid man stated that he might have lived if given immediate medical attention. However, he was too severely wounded to be evacuated by the patrol when it withdrew. Enemy medical aid men were seen to enter the area as the patrol withdrew. Each of the witnesses were of the opinion that he died at the spot where he was wounded. | | Following the end of the war, the American Graves Registration Command (AGRC) was tasked with investigating and recovering missing American personnel in Europe. Unable to find any remains, they declared Jacks non-recoverable. However, in January 1951, a German War Graves Commission found a set of remains wearing Jacks’ ID tags while they were disinterring German soldiers from a military cemetery near Ludwigswinkel, Germany, 14 miles to the northeast of Lichtenberg. AGRC recovered the remains, designated X-8515 Neuville, but found discrepancies between the remains and Jacks’ records and couldn’t understand how it would have been possible for Jacks’ remains to end up 14 miles away from where he went missing. Jacks was declared non-recoverable in October 1951 and X-8515 was buried at what is today Brittany American Cemetery, an American Battle Monuments Commission site in St. James, Normandy, France. | | While studying unresolved American losses in the Lichtenberg area, a DPAA historian reviewed the X-8515 case and determined German medics had recovered Jacks near Lichtenberg and moved him to the nearest German field hospital, which was in Ludwigswinkel, where he died. This information, along with a scientific re-evaluation of X-8515’s height, weight, and age estimates, made Jacks the only historical candidate for association with X-8515. X-8515 was disinterred in August 2021 and sent to the DPAA laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, for identification. | | To identify Jacks’ remains, scientists from DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis, as well as circumstantial evidence. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), Y chromosome DNA (Y-STR), and autosomal DNA (auSTR) analysis. | | The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced on 27 June 2022 that Pfc. Worley D. Jackswas accounted for on 21 June 2022. Further informaton will follow (information added August 2022). | | Jacks’ name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at Epinal American Cemetery. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for. | | Jacks will be buried in Marion, Ohio, on a date yet to be determined (information added September 2022) | | Worley had married Lillie Foley in April 1941. Their first son, Richard, was born a little over a year later. Their second son, Virgil, was four months old when Worley enlisted. | And by the time Worley was deployed to that battlefield in France, Lillie was pregnant with their third child, a girl. | She was born in July 1945, nearly two months to the day after the German surrender that marked the end of the war in Europe. | The girl was named after her father, who on March 7 was seriously injured in battle and never seen again. | “My mom actually told me that … he came to her in a dream and told her to name me Worletta,” said Worley’s daughter, Worletta Eckard. | Worletta and her brothers grew up knowing little about their father, including whether he was dead or alive. No one knew for sure. His body wasn’t found in the multiple sweeps of the battlefield after the war. | Marvel Lane, one of Worley’s several brothers and sisters, and the only one still alive, was 5 when he went off to war. | “The only thing I can remember, that my mom told me that my dad was crying a lot,” she said. “She could hear him praying outside. We had a grapevine and he would go up there and pray for my brother.” | Lillie Jacks remarried two years after the war. Worletta said her mom didn’t talk much about her father. | “For us it’s really hard to remember because mom was … still hurting even though she remarried,” Worletta said. “It’s still there, you know?” | Worletta recalls a time when she was 12 or 13 and babysitting at a family’s house. They had a record player and an album of military songs. | | “I loved all the service songs,” she said. “And I was playing it that day when she come in and she started crying … so I couldn’t play them anymore. She was very, very upset about it.” | | Lillie died in November 1999, never knowing for certain what happened to Worley. | | On one of the photos he poses with his wife and first born son Richard.