SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — A Utah Marine who was killed in action during World War II has been accounted for and will be buried more than 80 years after his death.
Marine Corps Reserve Pfc. Helmut F. Behlert of Salt Lake City was 27 years old when he deployed into the Pacific Theater. In the summer of 1944, he was part of the invasion force deployed to the island of Saipan in a larger effort to seize the Mariana Islands from Japan.
Behlert was killed in action on the first day of the invasion, June 15, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). His body could not be recovered until after the war.
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Following the war, the American Graves Registration Service led an effort to investigate and recover the remains of American personnel in the Pacific Theater. One of those remains – designated as Unknown X-40 – was recovered from Saipan and interred in the Fort William McKinley Cemetery, now known as the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, in the Philippines…