Ray Milton Guess
Corporal Guess was a member of Company D, 2nd Engineer Combat Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. He was taken Prisoner of War while fighting the enemy near Kunu-ri, North Korea on December 1, 1950 and died while a prisoner on February 28, 1951.
He is memorialized at Honolu and at Mountain Home Cemetery, Johnson City, TN, Ma, 31.
The Elizabethton Star, August, 1953
A sobbing mother today was free of the cruel uncertainity that had haunted her for two and a half years. Her son, Corporal Ray M. Guess, has been listed among prisoners of war who died in North Korean prison camps. She received notification via Defense Department telegram yesterday afternoon after almost a week of hopeful listening to radio broadcasts of names of returned POW’s. The telegram with no details as to the cause of death, included the following observation: “This information has not been verified. Therefore a determination of his status will not be made prior to a thorough analysis of all available information including the statement of recovered prisoners…”
But to Mrs. Raymond R. Guess, 1102 Summit Avenue, it was final. “We didn’t know he had ever been a prisoner,” she said. “We never heard from him after he was reported missing.”
This was December 1, 1950, less than four months later he had gone overseas and joined a frontline company of the 2nd Infantry Division. “We got two letters from him, both on the same day in November after he went to Korea,” Mrs. Guess said this morning. “But we never heard any more.”
Cpl. Guess, who was 17 when he enlisted in the Army, would have been 23 years of age. Trained at Fort Jackson, S.C., he was shipped to Fort Lewis, Wash., from which he sailed for the Far East shortly after the outbreak of hostilities in Korea. The young soldier, first from Carter County to have been reported dead in prison, is survived by his parents, three brothers and four sister.
- Rank: Corporal
- Date of birth: 1 April 1929
- Date of death: 28 February 1951
- County: Carter
- Hometown: Elizabethton
- Service Branch: Army
- Division/Assignment: 2nd Engineer Combat Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division
- Conflict: Korean War
- Awards: Prisoner of War Medal, Korean Service Medal, United Nations Service Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Korean Presidential Unit Citation, and Republic of Korea War Service Medal
- Burial/Memorial Location: Honolulu Memorial, Honolulu, Hawaii
- Location In Memorial: Pillar XX, Top Panel
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