Atlanta soldier finally found and buried after going missing during World War II

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) – An American soldier has finally come home after 80 years.

“As a small boy, my grandmother would speak of him sometimes,” said Rusty Midkiff.

Midkiff is the great nephew of Hood E. Cole, called “Hoodie” by his family.

“He did enlist. He enlisted at Fort McPherson down in Atlanta, and he died one day before his one-year anniversary. So that means January 15th, 1944,” said Midkiff.

Hoodie’s family was notified by a letter that he died in France in the Battle of the Bulge.

“He was buried in accordance with his religious beliefs in an American cemetery. Well, none of that was true,” said Midkiff.

Hoodie’s family soon discovered the Army had no idea where his body was.

So, for decades, all they had left of Hoodie were photos and questions.

“The photos that we have of him, which are quite few, of when he enlisted, he’s always smiling. He looks happy. And that’s what my grandmother remembered about him, is that he was joyful,” said Midkiff. “She would speak of it and you could tell, just profound sadness.”

That’s where the Defense Prisoners of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency comes in.

“The agency and the agency’s predecessors had plotted the recovery location of these unknowns to the best of their ability. And what we do is, we can look at a region and say, ‘Okay, we have five unknowns from here. What units went through that area?’ And then we compile a list of what guys are missing from those units,” said Eric Klinek, a historian with the agency.

Hoodie’s remains happened to be found by construction workers with another body when a road was being paved in France in 2018. The type of boots on the bodies indicated they were American soldiers. Historians and forensic scientists with Defense POW/MIA went to work to find out who they were.

Documents of what soldiers were still missing in action, combined with where they went missing, led the team with Defense POW/MIA to believe one of those bodies in France was Hoodie. They reached out to Hoodie’s family for DNA to confirm his identity.

“We went from knowing absolutely nothing about what happened to my uncle, my great uncle, within when his body was brought home, to being able to read first-hand accounts of people who were with him the day before he died,” said Midkiff.

There are actually thousands of bodies waiting to be officially identified and reunited with their families like Hoodie’s was. The body found with him has still not been identified.

“One of our biggest needs is for families who think that they might have a missing service member to donate their DNA through a simple cheek swab,” said Dr. Carrie Brown, a forensic scientist with the agency.

The agency doesn’t use common DNA sources like 23andMe or Ancestry.com to identify remains. They rely on people turning in samples and turning over letters from wartime that can fill in blanks about where soldiers may have been in their final days.

“There’s kind of this promise that’s stated, that, you know, no person left behind,” said Klinek.

“These are individuals who gave everything, sacrificed their lives so that we can continue on, have the freedoms that we enjoy today. And so there is no greater thing that I can do with my skills as an anthropologist than to return them to home soil and their families,” said Brown.

Like Hoodie, who Midkiff and other family members can now visit in the Georgia National Cemetery.

“On some level, it was just honoring his memory. And also my grandmother,” said Midkiff. “This was very important to her. It’s very sad she didn’t live to see it.”

Midkiff and his wife plan to fly to France to visit where Hoodie spent his final days before dying at the young age of 19.

Copyright 2024 WANF. All rights reserved.