By STEPHEN WILLIAMS | The Daily Gazette | Published: April 4, 2021
CORINTH, N.Y. (Tribune News Service) — Douglas Smead has spent 70 years wondering about the fate of his oldest brother, a U.S. Army private who went missing during savage fighting in bitter cold weather around the Chosin Reservoir, in what is now North Korea, in the early months of the Korean War.
Walter A. Smead disappeared while his artillery unit was holding a hill, covering the retreat of other forces and then itself falling back. He was listed as missing in action. After three years, the military declared him presumed killed — but his body was never found, and his fate in some sense remained unknown.