Home After 76 Years: The Teenage Soldier Lost at Chosin Finally Has His Name Back

Vester Hicks Jr. was so young when he joined the Army that his mother had to sign the paperwork. He was 17. Nine months later, he was gone, lost in the frozen chaos of a fighting withdrawal at the Chosin Reservoir, 18 days short of his 18th birthday.

For 76 years, the official answer to “Where is he?” was a shrug on government letterhead. Last Friday, the answer changed. Under an autumn sky in Holly, Michigan, a 21-gun salute rang out over a flag-draped casket, and a teenager from another century finally had a grave with his name on it.

No one from his own generation of the family was there to see it. But a lot of other people were.

A Boy at the Chosin Reservoir

Hicks entered the Army from Tennessee and served with C Company, 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, according to a U.S. Army Human Resources Command release. Born December 20, 1932, he enlisted on March 21, 1950, with his mother, Mary Flippo, signing for him because he was legally too young to sign himself, according to his funeral home obituary as reported by Hoodline.

By late November, his unit was on the east side of the Chosin Reservoir in northeast North Korea. On the night of November 27, 1950, Chinese forces launched a massive attack on U.S. and United Nations troops around the reservoir. Elements of the 31st and 32nd Infantry Regiments, defending ground north of Sinhung-ni, were forced into a withdrawal toward Hagaru-ri on December 1.

The Army’s account of what came next is stark. The route south was cut by Chinese roadblocks and raked by fire from the high ground. The column broke into smaller groups that were attacked again and again. Many soldiers were killed or captured. Survivors staggered into friendly lines at Hagaru-ri on December 2 and 3.

Hicks was not among them. He went missing on or about December 2. The Army says the exact circumstances of his loss are unknown. It issued a presumptive finding of death at the end of 1953.

Home All Along, Without a Name

Here is the part of the story that stops you cold. Hicks had, in a sense, already come home decades ago.

In 1954, during Operation Glory, the post-armistice exchange of war dead, North Korea returned remains believed to be those of American service members. One set, reportedly recovered from the east side of the Chosin Reservoir, was labeled Unknown X-15894 and buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, known as the Punchbowl.

For 67 years, Vester Hicks lay under a marker for an unknown soldier, thousands of miles from the family that never stopped wondering.

On March 8, 2021, as part of Phase Four of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s Korean War Disinterment Project, X-15894 was carefully disinterred and taken to a DPAA laboratory. Scientists used modern forensic techniques, including DNA comparison with family reference samples. The agency formally accounted for Hicks on September 4, 2025.

Those family samples came from his father, William, and his sister, Ruby Hammack, provided years earlier. Ruby died in May 2026, just four months before her brother’s funeral, according to the funeral home. She was the only relative who lived long enough to learn the match had been confirmed. Hicks had 12 full, half and step-siblings. None survived to attend his burial.

The Last Ride Home

His flag-draped casket landed at Detroit Metro Airport at 5:27 a.m. last Wednesday aboard a commercial Delta flight. Nieces, nephews, military officers and local veterans waited on the tarmac. His niece, Sherry Dragone, watched the casket come down, Hoodline reported.

Two days later, Michigan State Police and motorcycle riders from the VFW, American Legion and Patriot Guard Riders escorted the procession from Wyandotte to Great Lakes National Cemetery in Holly. People lined Oak Street as it passed. Hicks was buried with full military honors and a 21-gun salute.

His decorations include the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Good Conduct Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Korean Service Medal with one bronze service star, and the United Nations Service Medal.

Think about who was on that roadside. Most of them never met a Korean War soldier who went missing as a teenager. They came anyway. That is the part of this country that does not make the cable news chyron, and it is worth noticing.

He Is Not the Only One Coming Home

One week before Hicks was buried, Pennsylvania did the same for one of its own.

Army Cpl. Harry J. Guinther of Locustdale was 20 when he went missing on September 1, 1950, during the desperate defense of the Pusan Perimeter along the Naktong River, FOX56 reported. North Korean forces crossed the river in the night, and his company was overrun around 3 a.m.

Guinther’s family carried a haunting detail for decades. While stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, he had reportedly taken off his dog tags while working in a kitchen and handed them to his brother to hold overnight. Before he could get them back, his regiment shipped out for Korea. When his brother woke up, the unit was gone.

A year after he vanished, a graves registration team found two sets of remains in a shallow grave near his company’s position. One was identified in 1954 as Sgt. Charlie M. Browning, a soldier from Guinther’s own company. The other could not be identified with the science of the day and was buried at the Punchbowl as an unknown.

It was disinterred in June 2021. DNA from his surviving brother and sister, dental comparisons and even oxygen isotope testing of a tooth, which pointed to someone who grew up in Pennsylvania’s Columbia County area, finally confirmed his identity on June 26, 2026. He was buried September 18 at Indiantown Gap National Cemetery with full military honors.

The Science Closing the Gap

What is happening in Hawaii right now is one of the quiet success stories of American government. According to Military Times, DPAA Director Kelly McKeague said the agency now has DNA samples from 94% of the roughly 7,400 American service members still listed as missing from the Korean War.

That number matters enormously. Remains without a family reference sample are very hard to identify. Remains with one can be matched even after decades in the ground.

The Punchbowl effort is nearly finished. Fewer than 50 Korean War unknowns remain to be disinterred there, and that work should be done by the end of November, cemetery assistant director Lance Pridemore told Stars and Stripes, according to Military Times.

If you have a relative who went missing in Korea, World War II or Vietnam, this is the practical takeaway: the military’s casualty offices collect family reference DNA, and a single cheek swab from a niece, nephew or cousin can be the piece that finally closes a case.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Question

The boldest part of this story is still ahead. McKeague told Stars and Stripes during a September 1 webinar that DPAA will petition Arlington National Cemetery to disinter the Korean War Unknown at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, “simply because the probability is high that we will be able to identify that unknown.”

That would not start until every Korean War unknown in Honolulu has been disinterred. And it would be deeply emotional. The Korean War Unknown has rested at Arlington since May 30, 1958, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower presided over the interment and presented the Medal of Honor.

There is precedent. In 1998, the Vietnam War Unknown was exhumed and identified through DNA as Air Force Capt. Michael J. Blassie, whose family had pushed for testing. He was returned to Missouri and reburied at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery. The crypt he left now reads: “Honoring and Keeping Faith with America’s Missing Servicemen, 1958-1975.” At the time, then-Defense Secretary William Cohen said the government disturbed that hallowed ground “with profound reluctance.”

Reasonable people will feel differently about doing it again. Some see the Tomb as a sacred symbol that should stay untouched. Others believe a symbol means less than a real name returned to a real family. The military’s own answer, going back to 1998, has leaned toward the family.

Keeping Faith

We cover a lot of veterans’ stories at Stucci Media, from fights over disabled veterans’ benefits stuck in the Senate to grassroots efforts like Walk For A Hero. Some of those stories are about promises the country has not kept yet.

This one is about a promise it did keep, 76 years late. The same kind of DNA work that recently put a name to Boise’s Unknown Wanderer is now bringing teenage soldiers home from graves marked “unknown.”

Vester Hicks never got to be 18. He never got to come home, marry, grow old, or complain about his knees at a VFW fish fry. What he got, finally, was his name back and a hometown crowd on the side of the road. It is not enough. It never is. But it is something the country owed him, and it paid.