WWII veteran coming home to Portales

When Patsy Acuff of Clovis was growing up, she remembers there was always a trunk in the back of her grandmother's closet in Portales - a trunk that she, her siblings, and their cousins were taught to never touch or talk about.

The trunk contained the belongings left behind when Homer Mitchell left Portales in 1943 to join the United States Army.

Mitchell - who was Acuff's uncle and the son of Gussie and Roy Mitchell of Portales - was killed in action in Pachten Forest near Dillengen, Germany, on Dec. 10, 1944, only a couple of months past his 20th birthday.

The belongings in that box (which Acuff later learned included tiny green Army men and a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes) became especially precious when Mitchell was one of the thousands of Americans killed in World War II whose remains were considered unrecoverable.

Through the miracle of DNA technology - and the ongoing efforts of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency - Homer Mitchell's remains have been positively identified and will be returned to Portales for a graveside service with full military honors at 1 p.m. Friday at the Portales Cemetery.

Mitchell will join Thomas Vernon Long as the second local World War II veteran in the last year whose identifications 80 years after their deaths have allowed their remains to at last come home.

Mitchell's memorial service - under the direction of Steed-Todd Funeral Home of Clovis - is open to the public. Acuff said her brother will give a eulogy, and other tributes are expected from the Color Guard at Fort Bliss, the Legion Riders, the Green Knights, and local Boy Scouts.

"There will also be a 21-gun salute and presentation of flags," Acuff said, "then his remains will be buried at the foot of his mother's grave."

Acuff was too young to have known her uncle, but "he's been talked about my whole life," she said. "My older brother has a picture of our uncle holding him and one of our cousins on his legs.

"My whole life we were told he was hit by a grenade," Acuff said, which seemed a logical explanation for why no remains had been returned.

As Acuff has since learned, Mitchell and three others who died that day were likely killed by shrapnel in fierce fighting, and then later buried by German citizens in a civilian cemetery in Hüttersdorf, Germany.

After the military learned of their burial, those graves were exhumed and the remains were moved to a military cemetery in France, Acuff said.

Each of those then-unidentified individuals was eventually assigned a case number as historians and researchers worked diligently to discover identities.

In 2023, case X-3212 was positively identified as Homer Mitchell, who at the time of his death was a private in US Army Company F, 2nd Battalion 359th Infantry Regiment, 90th Infantry Division, also known as the Red T.O. (Texas and Oklahoma).

That identification was the result of a five-year process, including three years of historical research and another two years of lab work, according to Sean Everette, a spokesperson for the DPAA,

Last summer, Acuff and other family members were notified that Mitchell's remains had been positively identified.

"When I got the call in August, I thought it was a prank," Acuff said.

Mitchell's father Roy died 10 years after his son, but his mother Gussie lived until 1987. In 1958, she buried a second son who was killed in a traffic accident.

"She had a lot of grief in her life," Acuff said. "I never realized how much."

Having closure at last is "great, but I am sad for my grandmother," Acuff said. "She went to her grave grieving."

Friday's burial will be the third for the uncle Acuff never met.

"The third time's the charm," she said. "I'm so glad there were still some of us here to know about this."