Virginia soldier killed during D-Day invasion accounted for more than 80 years later

A soldier from Virginia who died on D-Day has been accounted for 81 years after he was killed, officials said in a news release. 

U.S. Army Sgt. Ivor D. Thornton, 34, landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy with Company H, 2nd Battalion, 116th Infantry Regimental Combat Team, 29th Infantry Division as part of the second wave of the invasion, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said in a news release. D-Day, or Operation Overlord, was a massive Allied invasion of northern France by air and sea during World War II. The operation, on June 6, 1944, marked the beginning of the liberation of Europe from Hitler’s rule. 

The company disembarked from their landing craft at around 7 a.m. Fellow soldiers observed Thornton wading ashore, but he was not seen again after that, the DPAA said. The day after the invasion, Thornton’s unit searched for him, but he was not found. He was officially listed as missing in action. His name was engraved on the Walls of the Missing at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France. 

On June 8, 1944, two days after D-Day, graves registration personnel recovered a set of remains from Omaha Beach that they were unable to identify, the DPAA said. The remains were interred at U.S. Military Cemetery Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, near Omaha Beach, and marked as X-159 St. Laurent. 

In 1945, an attempt was made to identify the unknown remains, but the effort was unsuccessful, the DPAA said. Analysts with the American Graves Registration Command failed to identify the remains again in 1947. Two years later, in 1949, a board of officers from the command recommended the remains be declared unidentifiable.  

In April 2022, two families, including Thornton’s, requested that X-159 be disinterred. The families asked that the remains be compared to those of Thornton and another soldier. The remains were exhumed in September 2023 and transferred to the DPAA laboratory. Scientists conducted dental and anthropological analyses and mitochondrial DNA analysis, the DPAA said. 

Those efforts finally identified the remains as belonging to Thornton. A rosette will be placed next to his name on the Walls of the Missing to indicate that he has been accounted for, the DPAA said, and he will be buried at the Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C.