An undated photo of Pfc. St. Clair M. Gibson. ()
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (Tribune News Service) — The remains of a World War II soldier from New Haven, Conn., who went missing in 1944 while fighting in northern Italy have been identified and reburied at Arlington National Cemetery, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
U.S. Army Pfc. St. Clair M. Gibson, 30, was identified last year following a laboratory analysis of remains exhumed from the Florence American Cemetery and Memorial, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Tuesday.
Gibson joined the military in September 1943 when he was assigned to Company F, 2nd Battalion, 371st Infantry Regiment, 92nd Infantry Division — a then-segregated unit made up of Black soldiers and mostly white officers.
Defense officials said he went missing on Nov. 18, 1944, while engaged in combat near Monte Canala in the northern Apennine Mountains as Allied forces attempted to dislodge the German military from Italy. Reported killed in action, his remains were not recovered.
After the war ended, the American Graves Registration Service — an agency tasked with investigating and recovering missing Americans in the Mediterranean Theater — found a set of remains designated as X-272 Castelfiorentino while searching a battlefield in Monte Canala, officials said.
“However, the AGRS could not identify the remains at the time,” officials said. “The X-272 remains were interred at Florence American Cemetery in Impruneta Italy, and on July 8, 1949, the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps declared Gibson’s remains nonrecoverable, ending all active searches for him.”
Officials said DPAA researchers recommended exhuming the X-272 remains for new analysis as part of a comprehensive research and recovery effort focused on American soldiers missing from ground combat in Italy.
The remains were then disinterred in July 2017 and sent to a DPAA lab.
Researchers from DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis while scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA and nuclear single nucleotide polymorphism analysis to identify the remains, officials said.
Officials said Gibson was declared accounted for on May 7, 2025. To mark the identification, a rosette will be placed next to his name on the Tablets of the Missing at Florence American Cemetery and Memorial.
Officials said the identification was recently shared with Gibson’s family and noted that the remains were buried at Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday.
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