A “Buffalo Soldier” was killed in 1945. His remains have just been identified.

Particularly hard hit was Company L of the 366th Regiment, which lost 13 men that day, including Pfc. Lemuel Dent Jr., of Charles County, Maryland, whose body was lost in the aftermath of the fighting.

But this month, the Pentagon agency that works to find missing service members announced that 79 years after the Feb. 8, 1945, battle, the remains in the grave have been identified as those of Dent.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) said the identification was part of an ongoing project to find the approximately 50 men from the 92nd Division listed as missing in action during World War II .

The 92nd was called the Buffalo Division, after a name originally given to African-American soldiers serving in the western United States in the late 1800s.

During World War II, the division was criticized by the military for poor combat performance. But historians have said it was poorly trained, poorly led and largely unprepared when it was thrown into combat in Italy in 1944 and 1945.

“These individuals were serving in a segregated military, in which they were not treated like other soldiers,” said DPAA forensic anthropologist Traci Van Deest, who is leading the 92nd Division project.

“They were not treated with the same type of honor and respect,” she said in a video interview. It’s important that their lives are remembered and their stories told now, she said.

Dent, who was 30 when he was killed and was from rural Ironsides, Maryland, is only the fourth division soldier to be identified, and the first in five years, the police said. DPAA.

When the remains in the grave were found near the battlefield on May 5, 1945, the Army believed the soldier to be a member of the 92nd Division. But at the time there was no way to make an identification.

The body was designated “unknown” and buried in what is now the Florence American Cemetery, just south of the Italian city.

In June 2022, the Department of Defense and the American Battle Monuments Commission exhumed the remains for forensic analysis, the DPAA said. Most of the missing from the 92nd Division are buried in the Florence cemetery.

The remains were transported to the DPAA laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base, outside Omaha, for anthropological study. Examination of the bones suggested they may have come from a person similar in stature to Dent. He was 5 feet 5 inches tall.

The bones also showed evidence of blunt force and projectile trauma that may be consistent with explosion incidents, Van Deest said.

DNA was extracted from one of Dent’s thigh bones and experts from the Armed Forces Forensic Medical System compared it with DNA samples from Dent’s family members to make the identification, said the DPAA.

His family members could not be reached for comment.

In the 1930 census, Lemuel Dent Jr., then 16, along with his father and two brothers, were described as “lumberjacks.” In 1940, the census indicated that the elder Dent was a farmer.

There were many other Dents in the community, according to the census, and over the next few years several – including Lemuel Jr. – appear to have moved north from rural Maryland.

When he entered the Army in 1941, he lived in Linwood, Pennsylvania, a small industrial town south of Philadelphia, according to government records and the Chester Times newspaper.

When he was killed, the newspaper reported that he was employed by the American Viscose Corporation, a nearby company that manufactured rayon at a factory on the Delaware River.

Dent’s 92nd Division consisted primarily of black soldiers and white officers, except for the 366th Regiment, which had officers of color. Company L was commanded by Captain Wejay S. Bundara, of Indian origin and graduate of Howard University.

Americans were fighting in Italy to drive out the powerful armed forces of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy’s ally during the war.

Dent was aboard a tank as he and his company crossed the shallow Cinquale Canal, where it empties into the Ligurian Sea on the northwest coast of Italy.

The tank hit a mine. The Germans caught the Americans in the open and, with mortars, machine guns and artillery, killed Dent and 12 other soldiers from Company L.

Part of the battle was described by Lieutenant Dennette Harrod of Company I of Washington, D.C.:

The tanks had stopped on the beach, some hit by artillery, others knocked out by mines. …I don’t know how we did it, but we kept moving, despite all the shelling, mortar and machine gun fire, losing dead and wounded every step of the way.

After the battle, black soldiers were removed from combat and criticized by the military’s top brass.

“The infantry of this division lack the emotional and mental stability necessary for combat,” said Lt. Gen. Lucian K. Truscott Jr., according to Hondon B. Hargrove’s 1985 book, “Buffalo Soldiers in Italy “.

Seven hundred men from the 92nd Division gave their lives in Italy, DPAA said, and thousands more were wounded. Nearly half of the men still missing belong to the 366th Regiment.

Two men from the division, 1st Lts. Vernon J. Baker and John R. Fox, were received the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for bravery, in 1997.

Fox was killed in action. He had launched an artillery strike on his own position while the enemy surrounded him. When the gunners hesitated, he ordered: “Fire!” They are more numerous than us. »