The remains of a Detroit man who was killed in World War II and never had his body recovered until recently will be interred at the Great Lakes National Cemetery in Holly on Friday.
Army Tech. Sgt. Leonard J. Dettloff was killed in action on Nov. 10, 1944 at the age of 26. He was assigned to Company M, 3rd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division and his unit was engaged in battle with German forces near the Hürtgen Forest in Hürtgen, Germany when he was killed.
Due to the tactical situation, his remains could not be immediately recovered. After the war, investigators conducted searches in the area between 1946-1950 but were unable to recover or identify his remains, and he was declared non-recoverable in October 1951.
However, when studying unresolved American losses in the Hürtgen area, a historian with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency determined one set of unidentified remains, designated X-8118 St. Avold, possibly belonged to Dettloff.
The remains were disinterred from the Lorraine American Cemetery in France in 2018 and sent to DPAA for identification. Detloff was accounted for on May 5, 2023, after his remains were identified using circumstantial evidence as well as dental, anthropological, mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome DNA analysis
His name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at the the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands, and a rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.
