Graveside services for PFC Luther E. Bagley will be held 11 AM, Saturday, August 10, 2024, at Evergreen Cemetery, Fitzgerald, Georgia, with full military honors. A public visitation will be held from 8:30 until 10:30 AM on Saturday at Paulk Funeral Home.
The public is invited to line the procession route beginning at Paulk Funeral Home. The funeral cortege will depart the funeral home at approximately 10:30 and will travel south on Main Street to Roanoke Drive, turning east to Grant Street, turning south to Benjamin Hill Drive, and turning east to the western entrance of the cemetery.
Private First Class Bagley entered the U.S. Army from Georgia and served with Company K, 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional). On May 17, 1944, the 5307th Composite Unit, also known as Merrill's Marauders, began an assault on a Japanese-held airfield in Myitkyina, Burma, fighting alongside elements of the 42nd and 150th Chinese Infantry Regiments of the X Force. While the airfield was quickly captured, the town of Myitkyina had been reinforced with enemy troops, and over the next three months, Merrill's Marauders engaged in a series of back-and-forth battles with the Japanese troops in Myitkyina, while also enduring monsoons, disease, and waning supplies. The town was finally captured on August 3, 1944, after reinforcements from a Chinese army division arrived. PFC Bagley was killed in action on July 25, 1944, near Sitapur, Burma, during the battle for control of the village of Myitkyina. Conditions on the battlefield prevented the recovery of his body at the time of his death. In 1947, during post-war search and recovery efforts, American Graves Registration Service personnel recovered a set of remains in the vicinity of Myitkyina. The remains were initially examined at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, but investigators were unable to scientifically identify them at the time, and they were interred as Unknown in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu. In 2018, this set of Unknown remains was disinterred from the Punchbowl and transferred to the DPAA laboratory for further study. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established an association between these remains and PFC Bagley.
On May 7, 2024, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Private First Class Luther E. Bagley, missing from World War II.