Military Identifies Remains of WWII Soldier Who Served in Legendary Merrill's Marauders
There are some American servicemen whose stories deserve to be remembered long after the wars they fought have ended.
And sometimes, even more than 80 years later, the country gets another opportunity to honor them.
That opportunity has arrived for Army Pvt. Joseph A. Gala, whose remains have finally been identified more than eight decades after he was killed during World War II.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Wednesday that Gala, a 21-year-old native of Lynn, Massachusetts, was accounted for on Sept. 10, 2025.
Gala served with Merrill’s Marauders, a legendary American infantry unit that conducted some of the war’s most grueling operations against Japanese forces in the China-Burma-India Theater.
According to the DPAA, Gala was assigned to Company E, 2nd Battalion, 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), the unit officially known as Merrill’s Marauders.
He joined the outfit in May 1944 as part of a group of replacement soldiers known as “New Galahad,” supplementing the original contingent of troops, nicknamed “Old Galahad.”
It was hardly a routine assignment.
Merrill’s Marauders were a volunteer infantry force assembled for what President Franklin D. Roosevelt described as a secret and dangerous mission. Their job was to operate deep behind Japanese lines in the jungles of Burma, disrupting enemy supply lines and attacking Japanese positions.
The unit’s reputation was earned the hard way.
As CBS News reported, approximately 3,000 men volunteered for the mission, but the brutal conditions and relentless fighting left only around 200 remaining by the time the unit accomplished its primary objective.
The Marauders endured a roughly 1,000-mile trek through the Burmese jungle, battling disease, exhaustion, malnutrition, and Japanese resistance along the way.
Their eventual objective was the capture of the Myitkyina airfield, a strategically important position held by Japanese forces.
On May 17, 1944, the Americans accomplished that mission after fighting through five major battles and approximately 30 smaller engagements against an elite Japanese force that significantly outnumbered them.
The victory came at an extraordinary cost.
One former Marauder, Sam Wilson, recalled the grim reality of the operation in an interview with the Army in 2016.
“We were expendable,” Wilson said. “A plan existed on paper to get us into Burma, but no plan existed to get us out.”
Gala was among the replacements sent to reinforce the battered unit.
On June 16, 1944, his battalion advanced south from the village of Mankrin against heavily fortified Japanese positions north of Myitkyina.
The exact circumstances of Gala’s death were never recorded. The War Department declared him killed in action on July 14, 1944.
His remains would remain unidentified for generations.
Following the war, American military personnel recovered remains from the battlefields of Burma and India. Gala’s remains were eventually transferred to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii, and buried among other unidentified servicemen.
In 2018, DPAA personnel began exhuming unidentified remains from the cemetery as part of efforts to identify soldiers killed during the fighting around Myitkyina.
Scientists eventually identified Gala through dental and forensic analysis, along with anthropological and circumstantial evidence.
More than 80 years after giving his life in service to his country, the young soldier is no longer among America’s unidentified war dead.
The passage of time has done little to diminish what these men were asked to endure. And while the men of Merrill’s Marauders accomplished their mission under almost unimaginable conditions, their sacrifices deserve recognition well beyond the history books.
America still has an obligation to remember the men who went to war and never made it home. In Gala’s case, that promise took more than eight decades to fulfill.
But it was not forgotten.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
