CHESTERTON, Ind. (Tribune News Service) — An Indiana man who fought in World War II war was finally returned home to a final resting place in Chesterton, having spent 80 years as an Unknown Soldier in a French cemetery.

The following information was provided on social media by the Town of Chesterton.

Private Charles W. Smalley Jr., who was born in Ligonier, will be interred with military honors at 10 a.m. Saturday, 81 years after his body vanished from a battlefield in France.

Smalley was 19 years old serving in Company L, Third Battalion, 141st Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division when he was killed by machine gun fire as his unit was attempting to repel German forces from a mountain between Marsanne and the Village of La Coucourde in Southern France.

According to a comrade’s account, Smalley was killed only 10 minutes into the attack on Aug. 25, 1944, but what happened to his body was a mystery. His parents, Charles Sr. and Bessie, were notified by telegram in September that their son was missing in action, but by July 1945, they were notified that based on anecdotal evidence, Smiley had been killed in action on the day he’d originally been listed as missing.

In 1951, Smalley’s remains were officially declared “unrecoverable” by the U.S. Army.

“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,” a Facebook post from the Town of Chesterton reports.

“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 MIA. By the time the U.S. Army reclassified Pvt. Smalley as KIA, 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.’”

The town also reported that based on their records, there was no notice and no obituary in the Chesterton Tribune, so one was created to honor him:

Smalley was born in Ligonier on Dec. 19, 1924, 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 were members of 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; two 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.

“God bless and Godspeed, Pvt. Smalley. Thank you for your service, your sacrifice, and your patience,” the town wrote.

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