 may have been a graduation photo. Unless otherwise noted, photos in this biography were provided by Carl Gunnoe. |
Remember...Joseph Harding Gunnoe
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| U.S. Army Corporal Joseph Harding Gunnoe was born at Charleston in Kanawha County, West Virginia, on October 2, 1923, to parents Burl Andrew Gunnoe and Mary Alice Spradling Gunnoe. Joseph had 12 older siblings: brothers James Earl, Kenneth, Wilbur, Thurmond, and twins Eugene and Robert. His sisters were Ora Iva Gunnoe Jones, Virginia Ethel Gunnoe Bellette, Anna M. Gray, Clara Belle Gunnoe Williams, Lottie Gunnoe Smith, and Hazel Lee Gunnoe Dearien. By the time of the 1940 Federal Census, only Eugene and Joseph were living in their parents' household. |  |
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A death notice for Cpl. Gunnoe in the Charleston Daily Mail (6 December 1944) states that he had graduated from Charleston High School and was employed by the Kanawha Manufacturing Company. His name is etched on a monument at 1520 Dixie Street along with other employees of Kanawha Manufacturing who served in World War II. When Joseph enlisted in the U.S. Army on March 23, 1943, at Fort Thomas, Kentucky, he indicated that he had three years of high school, was single without dependents, and his civilian occupation was that of "unskilled machine shop and related occupations." |
| Gunnoe was assigned to G Company, 2nd Battalion, 112th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division. According to his obituary in the Charleston Sunday Gazette-Mail on December 11, 2022, his unit landed in Normandy on July 22, 1944, and participated in the liberation of Paris before making the push into Germany. Three months into his service in Europe, on November 9, 1944, he was reported as missing in action somewhere in Germany. His unit was driven from Vossenack, Germany, in the Huertgen Forest on November 6, 1944, which is likely when he was killed, although he was not reported as missing until three days later. |  |
Leading up to the better known and bloodiest battle of World War II, the Battle of the Bulge, was the Battle of Huertgen Forest, the longest battle of the war fought on German territory. John Greenwood, Ph.D., Chief, Office of Medical History, Office of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army/Headquarters, U.S. Army Medical Command, writing in 2007, offers a chilling statistical account of the Battle of Hurtgen Forest:
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The U.S. Army's fight to take the Huertgen Forest stretched from September into December 1944 when the German Ardennes offensive disrupted the entire Allied front. During these months, the battles of the V and VII Corps of the First U.S. Army became one of the most costly and controversial American operations of the entire European war. Eventually, the 1st, 4th, 8th, 9th, and 28th Infantry Divisions, 2d Ranger Battalion, and 46th Armored Infantry Battalion and Combat Command R, 5th Armored Division, were all heavily engaged in the fighting. The 9th Infantry Division was involved twice, once in September and then again in October, and its 47th Infantry Regiment was actually engaged three separate times. During its operations in early November in the area of Vossenack, Kommerscheidt, and Schmidt, known collectively as the battle of Schmidt, the 28th Infantry Division lost more men in the forest than any of the other divisions. The divisions suffered over 30,000 casualties in killed, wounded, missing in action, combat exhaustion, and to various disease and non-battle injuries. (U.S. Army Medical Department, Office of Medical History, "The Fight for Huertgen Forest," 7 March 2007, accessed 28 January 2021, https://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/HuertgenForest/HF.htm.) |
| Cpl. Joseph H. Gunnoe's remains were deemed unrecoverable at the time, and the Germans never reported him as a prisoner of war. It was not until after the war that he was declared to be killed in action. Prior to his death, he had been awarded the Marksmanship Badge and the Combat Infantryman Badge. He was memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Netherlands American Cemetery, Margraten. Posthumously, Joseph was awarded the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and the World War II Victory Medal. |  |
Joseph was one of the 30,000 casualties in the operation titled the Battle of Huertgen Forest, referred to in the above account, losing his life at Vossenack. It would be 78 years before his remains were recovered and identified. On September 14, 2022, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced that Cpl. Joseph Harding Gunnoe had been accounted for and provided the following documentation:
In November 1944, Gunnoe was assigned to Company G, 112th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division. His unit captured the town of Vossenack, Germany, in the Huertgen Forest, on Nov. 2 and held it against constant German artillery and small arms fire, until finally forced to withdraw on Nov. 6. Due to the circumstances of the battle, Company G was not able to take a full accounting of the survivors until days after the fighting. Gunnoe was among the missing. Survivors had no information regarding his fate. The Army reported him missing in action as of Nov. 9. Graves registration teams did not recover or identify his body after the battle, and the Germans never reported him as a prisoner of war. He was declared killed in action after the war.Following the end of the war, the American Graves Registration Command was tasked with investigating and recovering missing American personnel in Europe. They conducted several investigations in the Huertgen area between 1946 and 1950, but were unable to recover or identify Gunnoe's remains. He was declared non-recoverable in October 1951.
While studying unresolved American losses in the Huertgen area, a DPAA historian determined that one set of unidentified remains, designated X-2775 Neuville, recovered near Vossenack in June 1946, possibly belonged to Gunnoe. The remains, which had been buried in Ardennes American Cemetery, an American Battle Monuments Commission site in Neuville-en-Condroz, Belgium, in 1949, were disinterred in July 2021 and sent to the DPAA laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, for identification.
To identify Gunnoe's remains, scientists from DPAA used anthropological analysis, as well as circumstantial evidence. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome DNA (Y-STR) analysis. ("Soldier Accounted For from World War II [Gunnoe, J.]," 22 November 2022, accessed 29 November 2022, https://www.dpaa.mil/News-Stories/News-Releases/PressReleaseArticleView/Article/3166293/soldier-accounted-for-from-world-war-ii-gunnoe-j/.)
A rosette will be placed by his name on the Tablets of the Missing at the Netherlands American Cemetery, indicating he has been recovered. His remains have been returned to the States, specifically to Charleston, West Virginia. After a service at Barlow-Bonsall Funeral Home, he will be buried at Sunset Memorial Park in South Charleston on December 14, 2022. While his family had long ago memorialized Joseph with a cenotaph at the cemetery, they are finally able to take comfort in the fact that their loved one has been brought home.
Article prepared by Patricia Richards McClure, who gratefully acknowledges the contributions of Joseph's nephew Carl Gunnoe, and great niece Teresa Eskins, who made this collaboration possible
December 2022
West Virginia Archives and History welcomes any additional information that can be provided about these veterans, including photographs, family names, letters and other relevant personal history.
