WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — A fallen solider from Wichita Falls is being brought home after nearly 80-years of being unidentified remains.

A 19-year-old Wichita Falls soldier was killed in battle in France and is now coming home to Texas. In September, the defense department’s missing-in-action accounting agency said he was finally accounted for with dental, anthropological, and mitochondrial DNA analysis.

PFC Clinton Smith’s unidentified remains were buried in a battle monuments cemetery in Lorraine. He was one of many soldiers whose remains could not be recovered immediately after the fierce battle in January 1945 and was later buried as unidentified. Smith died in an artillery barrage after his unit was surrounded in a battle that raged over several days near the German border. The graves registration command declared him non-recoverable in 1951 after extensive efforts to identify remains in that area. Smith’s name was recorded on the walls of the missing monument in France and is now marked as accounted for. Smith will be reburied in San Antonio later this month.