On Aug. 25, 1944, a Chesterton boy, Pvt. Charles W. Smalley Jr., 19—serving in Company L, 3rd Battalion, 141st Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division—was killed instantly by machine gun fire as his unit was attempting to repel a German force from a mountain between Marsanne and the Village of La Coucourde in Southern France.
Pvt. Smalley died—according to a comrade’s account—only 10 minutes into the attack, and what happened to his body immediately after he fell will always be a mystery. In September 1944, his parents, Charles Sr. and Bessie, were notified by telegram that their son was missing in action. Almost a year later, in July 1945, they were notified by the U.S. Army that, based on the anecdotal evidence provided by his comrade, Charles had been killed in action on the same day he’d originally been listed as missing.
Charles Sr. and Bessie would never have the opportunity to bring their son home and lay him properly to rest. In 1948 Charles Sr., only 39, himself died of a heart attack and in 1951 Pvt. Smalley’s remains were officially declared “unrecoverable” by the U.S. Army. As far as the Public Affairs Liaison knows, no obituary for Pvt. Smalley ever appeared in The Chesterton Tribune.
So it’s a testament to the the conscientiousness, the compassion, and the sheer doggedness of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) that Pvt. Smalley will be interred with military honors in Chesterton Cemetery, at 10 a.m. Saturday, June 21, 81 years after his body vanished from a battlefield in France.
We now know that, for almost three generations, Pvt. Smalley’s remains—designated by the 46th Quartermaster Grave Registration Company as “Unknown X-205”—had rested in the Rhône American Cemetery in Draguignan, France, after being unearthed from a secluded grave along a wooded ridge line near Montėlimar. Perhaps French villagers buried him there, but no one ever thought to make a connection between that unidentified body and Pvt. Smalley, whom—despite his comrade’s eyewitness account—the 141st Infantry Regiment had unaccountably presumed to be a prisoner of war and accordingly listed as M.I.A. By the time the U.S. Army reclassified Pvt. Smalley as K.I.A., in July 1945, bureaucracy in the 141st had made it impossible to link him to Unknown X-205. In August 1948, only days after Charles Sr. succumbed to a heart attack, Unknown X-205 was determined to be “unidentifiable.”
There matters stood for 75 years, until in 2023 DPAA historians—think of them more as detectives, gumshoes in olive drab—began investigating the case of Unknown X-205, as part of “an extensive review of resolved and unresolved casualties, combat operations, and unit records” related to Operation DRAGOON, the amphibious invasion of Southern France in August 1944. Eventually, DPAA determined Pvt. Smalley to be one of “six historical candidates for association with this Unknown.” In March 2023 X-205 was exhumed and transferred to the DPAA laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, where—two years later, on Jan. 25, 2025—DNA analysis established the remains to be Pvt. Smalley’s.
God bless and Godspeed, Pvt. Smalley. Thank you for your service, your sacrifice, and your patience.
Charles William Smalley Jr. was born on Dec. 19, 1924, in Ligonier, Ind., the son of Charles William Smalley Sr., a farmer, and Bessie Smalley, a housewife.
The Smalleys subsequently moved to Chesterton, Ind., where they resided at 322 S. Third St. and attended Chesterton First Methodist Church. Charles Jr. attended Chesterton High School but left before graduating to enlist in the U.S. Army.
He was tall and thin, 5’ 11 1/2’’ and 147 pounds, with blue eyes, black hair, and a light complexion, according to the Porter County Registrar’s report. Because Charles Jr. did not graduate from CHS, his photograph was never published in The Chesterton Tribune.
In December 1943, Pvt. Smalley sent word to his parents that he was stationed in North Africa. But only for a short time. Early in 1944 he sustained a shrapnel wound to his arm during combat in Italy and spent time in hospital before returning to Company L.
On Aug. 15, 1944, the 141st came ashore near Saint-Raphael, France, on the opening day of Operation Dragoon, and 10 days later, as the 19th German Army was endeavoring feverishly to withdraw, Company L, in a blocking position, was engaged by “intense small arms fire.” Pvt. Smalley was struck “about five times and from all indications he appeared to have been killed instantly,” his comrade later recalled.
Pvt. Smalley was awarded the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and Combat Infantryman Badge, and is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at Rhône American Cemetery, Draguignan, France.
Pvt. Smalley was survived by his father, Charles Sr., and mother, Bessie; two brothers, Jack and Ronald; his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Smalley of Ligonier; uncles, Buell Smalley of Angola, Ind., and Roy Smalley of Goshen, Ind.; and three aunts, Mrs. Louise Senff, Mrs. Jane Hicks, and Mrs. Ruth Galloway, all of Ligonier.
A graveside service will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday, June 21, at Chesterton Cemetery.
Professional arrangements are entrusted to White-Love Funeral Home, Chesterton.
