Alcario Valencia Flores was a United States Army soldier who was killed in action in France in Operation Northwind during World War II. His remains were found by a metal detectorist in 2021 and identified by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency in March 2024.
Case[]
Alcario Flores was born in c. 1907 in Ajo, Arizona. At some point in his life, he joined the United States Army in Coolidge, Arizona. His service number is listed as 39853364. At the time of his death, he was a Private First Class in Company G, 2nd Batallion, 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division, VI Corps.
On New Year's Eve 1944, Nazi Germany attempted its last major offensive, Operation Northwind, on the Western Front in World War II. They attacked through Allied defenses along a 40-mile-wide front between the French and German borders. Company G was assigned to defend a wooden ridge at Mount Ebersberg near Reipertswiller, France, in the following few weeks. On the night of January 18, 1945, the Germans established a line cutting Company G from its supply lines. Between then and January 21, Alcario was believed to have been killed, but his body was not recovered due to the intensity of the fighting. Although many men in his unit were taken prisoner, Alcario was not listed on any German prison rosters.
Operation Northwind, which took place in the final phase of the Battle of the Bulge, was a German defeat, with 23,000 German soldiers killed, wounded, or captured compared to 11,609 American soldiers and 7,000 French soldiers killed, wounded, captured, or reported missing.
Aftermath[]
Alcario was not among the prisoners of war returned to United States custody after the end of the war. He was declared dead on January 22, 1946, by the War Department. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart and was memorialized at the Tablets of the Missing at the Epinal American Cemetery in Dinozé, France.
In 1946, the American Graves Registration Command (AGRC) conducted a search and recovery effort for missing American military personnel in the European and Pacific theatres. While they were able to recover numerous sets of remains in the area Alcario was killed in, the Reipertswiller and Wildenguth areas of France, none of the remains identified were Alcario's. Those not identified were buried at the Lorraine American Cemetery at St. Avold, France, in 1949.
Identification[]
In 2021, an anonymous individual illegally metal detecting for relics at Mount Ebersberg discovered human remains, as well as 0.30-caliber casings and clothing connected to the US Army, in a foxhole. After burying the remains, they recorded the GPS coordinates and sent their finding to the German military cemetery in Niederbronn-les-Bains, France. In turn, they passed the information to the US Embassy in Paris, France and then to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. In December 2021, a DPAA Detachment Europe team retrieved the remains and sent them to a laboratory for identification. DPAA scientists used dental and anthropological analysis and circumstantial evidence to identify the remains. Scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System additionally used mitochondrial DNA analysis.
On March 1, 2024, the remains were identified as Alcario Valencia Flores. The identification was announced on July 9, 2024. He was buried in Tempe, Arizona, on August 3, 2024.