GERMAN SOLDIER WHO HUNG HIMSELF AT THE END OF THE WARRAY CUNNEENS UNIT CAME ACROSS THIS GERMAN SOLDIER IN THE WOODS.

 German soldier who hung himself at the end of the warRay Cunneen’s unit came across this German soldier in the woods.

He had evidently hung himself when Germany surrendered, 1945

Jack Cummings posed on the lawn in his uniform, hands clasped behind his back, his Army cap perched on his head at a jaunty angle.

His father, Leo, or his mother, Helen, had probably said, “Stand over there, Jack, while I take a picture.”

John B. “Jack” Cummings was 22, a handsome college man headed off to World War II from Juneau, Wisc., where his family, no doubt, prayed he would return.

But on Dec. 31, 1944, near the French village of Neuhaeusel on the Rhine River, he vanished from his foxhole, leaving behind a bloody piece of his skull and a helmet with a bullet hole in it.

For the next 74 years — until this summer — he was missing in action, his body declared non-recoverable.

He existed largely in old military files filled with dental charts, plaintive letters from his mother, and typed reports about the Army’s futile attempts to account for him.

Army Pvt. John B. Cummings, who was killed during World War II and who was listed as unrecoverable, was buried with honors beside his parents after his remains were found and identified this year.

(Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency) (N/A/Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency )

Jack Cummings posed on the lawn in his uniform, hands clasped behind his back, his Army cap perched on his head at a jaunty angle.

His father, Leo, or his mother, Helen, had probably said, “Stand over there, Jack, while I take a picture.”

John B. “Jack” Cummings was 22, a handsome college man headed off to World War II from Juneau, Wisc., where his family, no doubt, prayed he would return.

But on Dec. 31, 1944, near the French village of Neuhaeusel on the Rhine River, he vanished from his foxhole, leaving behind a bloody piece of his skull and a helmet with a bullet hole in it.

For the next 74 years — until this summer — he was missing in action, his body declared non-recoverable.

He existed largely in old military files filled with dental charts, plaintive letters from his mother, and typed reports about the Army’s futile attempts to account for him.

“Complete negative findings,” a 1947 Army report stated.

But a year earlier, the solitary grave of a slain GI had been discovered across the Rhine River in the German town of Iffezheim.

He had been killed near Neuhaeusel by an enemy raiding party that had attacked across the river.

His body had been brought back over the Rhine and buried under a wooden cross that read “Hier Ruht ein U.S.A. — Soldat gef. am 31.12.1944”: “Here rests a U.S.A. soldier,” who fell on Dec. 31, 1944.

For seven decades, as his parents mourned, aged, and then passed away, and his sister, Mary Ellen, married and had 12 children, no one knew that the anonymous “U.S.A.-Soldat” was John B. Cummings.