By Callahan Blackwood | October 16, 2026
On the morning of October 9, 2026, a Southwest Airlines flight landed at Albany International Airport carrying the remains of U.S. Army Private First Class Albert H. Marks of Kingston. Members of the New York Army National Guard Honor Guard received the flag-draped transfer case on the tarmac. Family and friends were present. The airport noted that after more than 80 years, a World War II soldier was finally coming home.
It had been 81 years, 10 months, and 2 days since Marks was killed on the German front. The record of what happened in between is a DPAA case file, and this account follows the case file.
December 7, 1944
Marks was 30 years old and a private first class in Company G, 2nd Battalion, 357th Infantry Regiment, 90th Infantry Division. He had entered the service from New York. By December 1944, his division was part of the Allied push into Germany, and his unit was assigned to the assault across the Saar River toward the town of Dillingen.
On December 7, the unit moved forward from the village of Pachten to join the front line. During the fighting that day, Marks was killed by enemy artillery. His body could not be recovered because of the battle.
The German burial and what 1946 could not resolve
German forces recovered Marks and buried him in a cemetery in Reimsbach, Germany. In 1946, the American Graves Registration Command, the Army unit responsible for locating and identifying American war dead, exhumed several American remains from the Reimsbach cemetery. None of them could be identified as Marks.
The remains later connected to Marks were designated Unknown X-4654 St. Avold. They had been recovered from Reimsbach. At some point they were interred at what is now Normandy American Cemetery, one of the American overseas cemeteries maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission.
Marks's name went onto the Walls of the Missing at Lorraine American Cemetery in St. Avold, France, where it has remained. The Walls of the Missing record the names of American service members whose remains were unrecovered or unidentified at the time of burial.
The case sat in that condition for decades: a soldier listed missing, an unknown set of remains in a Normandy grave, a name on a wall in France.
The historian's determination
DPAA, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, is the Defense Department office responsible for accounting for Americans missing from past conflicts. At some point after the agency's establishment, a DPAA historian reviewed the file on Marks and determined that the remains designated Unknown X-4654 could belong to him. The agency has not released when that determination was made or the specific reasoning behind it, beyond what is reflected in the case's progression.
On the basis of that determination, the remains were disinterred from Normandy American Cemetery in June 2021. They were sent to the DPAA laboratory for analysis.
DPAA scientists used modern forensic techniques to identify the remains as those of Marks. The agency has not released which specific techniques were applied in this case.
April 2, 2026
On April 2, 2026, DPAA announced that Marks had been accounted for. That announcement is described by DPAA as an initial release. The complete accounting will be published after the family receives a full briefing. As of this writing, the full accounting has not been published.
The gap between death and accounting: 81 years and nearly four months.
Albany, October 9
Local coverage and an airport statement placed Marks's hometown as Kingston, in Ulster County. That is the community that sent him to the Army. It is the community the honor guard received him back to, or received him toward: no burial arrangements are in the public record as of October 16.
The dignified transfer at Albany International Airport on October 9 was conducted by the New York Army National Guard Honor Guard. Family and friends watched from the tarmac. The flag-draped transfer case moved from the aircraft to the hearse. No further details of that morning are in the public record.
The DPAA file for Marks is not fully closed. The complete accounting, which follows the family briefing, has not been released. What is in the record as of today is this: a soldier killed on a December morning in Germany in 1944, buried under a number in Normandy, and accounted for in the spring of 2026. His remains came through Albany on a Friday. The rest will follow at the Army's pace.
