WWII MIA ID’d

By Editor | January 20, 2026 |

Defense Department identifies remains of soldier as Douglas County’s Paul Gregg

Staff Sergeant, Paul A. “Dusty” Gregg, of Douglas County, Illinois, had been classified as Missing In Action (MIA) since 1944, after hostile action during WWII.

He is MIA no longer. On Jan. 15 of this year, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) declared Gregg “accounted for” earlier last year. Known only as X-114 before identification, Gregg had rested in an American cemetery site in Belgium until his recent disinterment. A funeral in Arcola is pending.

Gregg lived throughout the Douglas County area—born in Arcola in 1915; lived in Garrett; played high school football (captain and star of the team in the early to mid 30s) for Atwood; and worked for “various cafes and restaurants” in Arthur, before being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1941.

In September of 1943, Gregg was deployed overseas for combat. In 1944, as part of the 28th Infantry Division, he found himself in fierce fighting near Fouhren, Luxembourg, during the Battle of the Bulge.

According to a letter sent from Captain M. O’Dea to Miss Ada Fern Dixon of Arthur, in September, 1945, Staff Sergeant Gregg was: “Captured in the Ardennes Breakthrough while in charge of his section. When marched to the rear an artillery barrage, laid down in error by the Germans themselves, fell right in the middle of the column of marching prisoners. According to the report of a soldier captured at the same time, but later freed, Sgt. Gregg was killed by this barrage.”

Not all bodies recovered from the tragedy were identifiable; accordingly, this one particular body found—now identified as Gregg—was simply labeled X-114.

Gregg was soon added to the U.S.’s total WWII death toll of around 400,000 soldiers, of which approximately 79,000 were classified as MIA. (Today, that MIA figure is down to approximately 73,000 thanks to the dedicated, non-stop work of DPAA and various military museums and historical agencies that continue, to this day, the complicated mission of locating, identifying and reuniting soldiers with grieving family members.)

According to its press release, “The DPAA is a Department of Defense Agency whose mission is to recover and identify service members listed as prisoners of war or missing in action from past conflicts. Officials said that in 2021, a DPAA historian completed a study of unresolved combat losses in Fouhren from the Battle of the Bulge and recommended X-114 remains be disinterred for scientific comparison to Gregg. Following exhumation of the remains in 2024, they were confirmed to be Gregg’s through dental, anthropological, and DNA analysis. X-114 was confirmed to be Gregg.”

The Army itself also did everything it could to help families of MIA soldiers during my term of service during the Vietnam War in the early 70s. Part of my duties as Commander of an Armed Forces facility included personally meeting monthly at the homes of parents and/or spouses—in my area of central Massachusetts.

We discussed the status of their missing loved one, and the actions being taken to identify and reunite the parties. As you might imagine, there were, sadly, seldom new facts.

Over 50 years later, I still remember those visits. The people were always gracious, understanding, and had largely accepted the fact of death. And yet, I always detected this glimmer of hope in them: perhaps some injury that led to amnesia?; perhaps captured and not reported by the enemy?; perhaps… perhaps.

This is the pain of a loved one upon hearing “MIA.” A reported death is usually quite traumatic to hear, but—unlike an MIA notification—grieving often occurs instantly and can usually lead to eventual closure.

But there was this sense I had, while visiting MIA families, that grieving and closure could not occur until the person is found and returned to his family, to rest peacefully, reunited with loved ones in a familiar setting being the “home” from which they were displaced on short notice. Displaced into strange and dangerous places, charged with harsh tasks.

May the Gregg family finally have closure, peace, and spirit-filling pride in the reassuring proclamation of Jesus telling His disciples that the greatest love is sacrificial: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

mike carroll