Sgt. Thibodeaux's journey finishes where he asked for it to end

Clement Thibodeaux, Jr.’s journey finished Saturday where he had asked for it to end.

The Church Point native, officially unaccounted for since being taken prisoner by the Chinese army during the Korean War more than a half century ago, was entombed in Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Cemetery, beside his great-grandfather, Theodule Thibodeaux, a Civil War veteran..

An honor guard stood at attention by Thibodeaux’s coffin, a rifle party fired three shots, taps rang out and Thibodeaux was entombed beside his great-grandfather, Civil War veteran Theodule Thibodeaux.

The soldier requested that site as part of standard paperwork completed before shipping out for the war zone in 1950.

Thibodeaux, “Junior” to those who knew him, enlisted shortly after turning 17, apparently encouraged by his father with whom, according to family, he was not getting along.

He advanced quickly in rank on the battlefields of Korea, had been wounded by machine gun fire in late summer and returned to action.

The UN force advanced rapidly in the summer and fall of 1950 into North Korea, prompting the new Communist China to have concerns that it might cross the Yalu River into Manchuria, threatening the new nation.

In late October, Red China entered the war which had begun on June 27, sending more than 200,000 troops into North Korea.

Sgt. Thibodeaux’s unit engaged the Chinese in late November 1950 when their position was overrun by the sheer overwhelming numbers of the Chinese force.

Thibodeaux was among a number of GI’s captured in the debacle known as the Battle of Ch’ongch’on River in northwest Korea, repelling the UN Command advance and beginning the longest retreat in the history of the U.S. Army.

Military estimates are that the U.S. force was outnumbered 10 to 1.

They were taken to POW camp Pukchin, more commonly known as “Death Valley”, and Thibodeaux was never officially heard from again.

At the war’s end in 1953, prisoners returning from the camp told Army officials that Thibodeaux died from malnutrition and pneumonia about two months after his capture, just after his 18th birthday.

His remains, found in a ditch along with others near the POW camp site, were identified through a DNA sample from his late brother Wilson Thibodeaux, Sr., who provided the sample in 2008.

Until the identification, Junior was one of more than 5,000 U.S. soldiers missing in Korea, a war that, including them, took about 35,000 American lives.