Corporal Jules Hauterman Jr. was part of the U.S. Army’s 31st Regimental Combat Team at the Chosin Reservoir when they were overrun by counterattacking Chinese troops.
Hauterman was 19 years old when he was among the 1,300 casualties of the 31st Regimental Combat Team.
Since neither the Chinese nor North Koreans listed Hauterman in their official records as a POW and none of the repatriated POWs could remember the corporal, he was declared dead at the end of the Korean War in 1953.
Hauterman’s remains and those of other soldiers killed in action around the reservoir were actually repatriated to the U.S. after the war. Unfortunately at the time, he (at the time known as “Unknown X-15904”) and many others were buried in Hawaii after being declared unidentifiable.
According to a report from the Associated Press’ Mark Pratt, Hauterman and many others were successfully identified by the Department of Defense’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
In Cpl. Hauterman’s case, they used his dental records.
Hauterman was a medic with the Medical Platoon, 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, attached to the 31st Regimental Combat Team. The RCT occupied the east side of the Chosin River.
For three days and four nights, the unit battled the 80th Division of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Forces. Then they tried to fight their way to the Marines in the South at Hagaru-ri, but their entire column was destroyed.
No one from Jules Hauterman’s family is still alive, unfortunately, but he will be buried in his family plot in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
There are 7,757 U.S. troops still unaccounted for from the Korean War. To learn more about how the DoD’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency tracks America’s POWs and MIAs, check out the video below.