Henry Svehla

Henry Svehla grew up in Belleville after a Newark birth and went to Korea as a private first class with Company F, 2nd Battalion, 32nd Infantry, 7th Infantry Division. On June 12, 1952, near Pyongony — the fight for Hill 472 in the unit record — his platoon was under mortar and small-arms fire while trying to hold and then withdraw under pressure.

The Medal of Honor citation, awarded decades later on May 2, 2011, states that he charged a machine-gun position, was wounded, kept fighting, and then threw himself on a grenade that landed among his men. He was killed. His body could not be recovered at the time of the loss. He has not been identified among remains returned after the ceasefire. DPAA notes that North Korea has not permitted investigation of the loss area, which keeps modern recovery work blocked.

DPAA's public profile (a0Jt0000011I570EAC) still reads Unaccounted For, analytical category Deferred. A memorial marker stands at Arlington National Cemetery; that stone is remembrance, not recovered remains. He is also on the Courts of the Missing in Honolulu and on the Korean War Veterans Memorial Wall. No rights-safe official portrait is hosted here. The documentation is a citation, a DPAA line that has not closed, and a hill that has not given him back.