Remember...
Ray Kirby Lilly
1933-1950
"Our soldiers fought in the Korean War to push back communism. As a result of their effort and the effort of our allies, South Korea is free today."
Pierre Poilievre
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Remember...Ray Kirby Lilly
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As of a decades-long, complex process culminating in a positive identification in September 2023, U.S. Army Corporal Ray Kirby Lilly has returned home. A full military funeral service was held on May 18 at the Memorial Funeral Directory, and he was interred near other family members in Roselawn Cemetery at Princeton, West Virginia, after being listed as missing for more than 70 years.
Ray Kirby Lilly, known to his family as Kirby, was born on January 19, 1933, in Matoaka, Mercer County, West Virginia, to parents Lake Buren Lilly and Mary Rosabell Foley ("Cordy") Lilly. He had an older sister, Eva Marie, and three younger sisters, Norma Jean, Carol Louise, and Patricia. Kirby was the only boy in this close-knit family of five siblings! According to 1940 and 1950 Federal Census documents, Lake was employed as a brakeman in the coal industry.
Kirby was not yet eighteen years old when he enlisted in the U.S. Army in May 1950. A month later, war broke out in Korea. According to his sister, Carol Louise Roland, he went to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for basic training, and then to Alaska. A light weapons infantryman, he would end up being sent to Japan and then to Korea. (Greg Jordan, "Korean War Soldier Cpl. Ray Kirby Lilly Is Coming Home to Mercer County," Bluefield Daily Telegraph, 2 November 2023, accessed 26 March 2024, https://www.bdtonline.com/news/korean-war-soldier-cpl-ray-kirby-lilly-is-coming-home-to-mercer-county/article_1b46af7c-78f0-11ee-9be5-cf04f573c7eb.html.) Kirby died on February 28, 1951, in a North Korean prisoner of war camp after being listed as missing in action on November 2, 1950.
At the time, Cpl. Lilly was a member of L Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division. He went missing in action after his unit engaged in defensive actions in the vicinity of Unsan, North Korea. After Operation Big Switch, several returning prisoners of war reported seeing him at POW Camp #5.
His remains were buried near the POW camp, where he was listed as an unknown, and later transferred to the Honolulu Memorial Cemetery ("Punchbowl"). According to a March 15, 2024, press release from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency,
In the fall of 1953, during Operation Glory, North Korea unilaterally turned over remains to the United States, including one set, designated Unknown X-14682. Those remains were reportedly recovered from prisoner of war camps, United Nations cemeteries, and isolated burial sites. None of the remains could be positivity [sic] identified as Cpl. Lilly. Those remains were subsequently buried as an Unknown in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.In July 2018, the DPAA proposed a plan to disinter 652 Korean War Unknowns from the Punchbowl. In 2019 DPAA disinterred Unknown X-14682 as part of Phase Two of the Korean Disinterment Project and sent the remains to the DPAA laboratory for analysis.
It's unclear whether Cpl. Lilly's remains were among those sent in 1953 or in 2019. Nevertheless, because the family had made inquiries regarding his identification and burial, identification was made possible through the family's willingness to provide DNA from several members.
At the Honolulu Memorial, he was originally memorialized on the Courts of the Missing, where a rosette will now be posted next to his name to show that he has been found.
According to Jordan's interviews with the family, Kirby had written a number of letters to his mother, which the family had kept in a cedar chest. Notification that his remains had been identified prompted them to read the letters and discover "what kind of young man he was." Family member Andi Fleming said, "He sent money home to his mother, talked a lot about what he was doing. . . . He was excited and exuberant. . . . He didn't show fear in his letters to his mother. He talked a lot about the food he ate. Two different times he wrote down the menu."
The identification of Kirby's remains, their subsequent return to the States, and his burial in the mountains he loved have finally given closure to the family who loved him and are grateful for his return.
Article prepared by Patricia Richards McClure
August 2024
West Virginia Archives and History welcomes any additional information that can be provided about these veterans, including photographs, family names, letters and other relevant personal history.