STATENVILLE — A soldier who went to war as a teenager more than seven decades ago is finally coming home to South Georgia.

Cpl. Dewey E. Rewis Jr., who died at age 18 in 1951 as a prisoner of war during the Korean War, will be buried Saturday alongside his family in Echols County’s Wayfare Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery.

A native of Waycross, Rewis will be buried alongside his father, mother and many Rewis family members in the Wayfare cemetery, said W.G. Smith of Roundtree Funeral Home in Homerville, which is handling arrangements.

He was was a member of Battery D, 15th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion, 31st Regimental Combat Team, 7th Infantry Division, according to an Army statement.

He was reported missing in action Dec. 2, 1950 after his unit came under attack as it advanced along the eastern banks of the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea. Four POWs who returned during Operation Big Switch in 1953 reported Rewis had died a prisoner of war in March 1951 at an area called Death Valley.

During Operation Glory in 1954, North Korea returned remains from Death Valley to the United Nations Command but Rewis was not associated with any of the repatriated remains. He was determined non-recoverable Jan. 16, 1956.

On Dec. 1, 1993, North Korea turned over 33 boxes of remains to the UNC, which were sent to the Central Identification Lab in Hawaii for forensic analysis.

Rewis was accounted for Oct. 25, 2022, after his remains were identified using circumstantial evidence as well as dental, anthropological, mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome DNA analysis.

His name is recorded on the American Battle Monuments Commission’s Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii, along with the others still missing from the Korean War. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.