'He's home': Remains of Nashville Marine killed during WWII identified, returned after 78 years

Billy is home.

Corporal William "Billy" R. Ragsdale was 23 years old when he and the 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division invaded the island of Saipan in June 1944 during the Pacific Theater of World War II.

He was first reported as wounded June 28, 1944.

Just two and a half months later, his high school sweetheart, Eloise, received a telegram. The Marines were unable to find her husband in the chaos of battle. He was now considered missing in action.

Almost a year after he was initially thought to be wounded, the Marine Corps once again wrote to Eloise.

"It is a source of profound regret to me and to his comrades in the Marine Corps that your husband, Corporal William Ronald Ragsdale, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, lost his life in action against the enemies of his country and I wish to express my deepest sympathy to you and members of your family in your great loss," the letter reads.

He had no children, and left behind his wife of three years, mother, brother and two sisters.

Now, 78 years later, and thanks to DNA testing, Billy is home.

"We're thanking God he's home," his nephew Jack Waggener said.

Casualty of war

Ragsdale was one of about a hundred unidentified soldiers buried in a military cemetery in the Philippines after the battle. About 3,500 U.S. soldiers were reported killed or missing in action.

Five years after the invasion, the American Graves Registration Service disinterred remains on Saipan in an effort to recover missing American troops in the Pacific Theater.

But Ragsdale was not identified among the remains and he was designated as "non-recoverable" in September 1949.

In January 2020, remains marked as "Unknown X-6" were disinterred from the cemetery in the Philippines and taken to a Defense POW/MIS Accounting Agency lab in Hawaii. The remains, they thought, had a good chance of being identified now with advances in technology.

That's when Waggener got a call from the Marines.

"They got my name and reached out and asked if I'd be willing to do a DNA test," Waggener said.

With his DNA, and that of a cousin, Roger Whitney, the lab positively identified the unknown remains as belonging to Ragsdale.

Waggener got the call in April with the positive results.

"They asked if we'd accept the remains and of course we said yes," he said. "It means the world to bring him home and bury him next to his family."

Coming home

Waggener and several family members were escorted by a half dozen Marines out onto the tarmac Thursday at Nashville International Airport.

The passenger jet pulled up, but stopped short of docking to the jetway. Two Marines climbed into the cargo hold, adjusted the flag draped over Ragsdale's casket and unloaded him from the plane.

People on the plane peered from the windows as the Marines saluted and marched the soldier to a nearby hearse.

"We put our hands on the casket and said a prayer," Waggener said. "It was all done in perfect military fashion."

Bringing Ragsdale home was the first goal, the second was burying him as close to family as possible in a plot of land, almost all of which has been sold out for decades, at the Woodlawn Memorial Park. The Waggeners knew that second goal might be out of reach.

And yet, it's as if one of those unsold plots has been waiting for Billy for 78 years.

Next to a large shade tree in the cemetery, Ragsdale's mother, Harriett, and father, William, rest. In front of them are Charlotte, their eldest daughter, and Mary Jane, their youngest.

To Charlotte's right will be Billy, reunited with his family once again.

Contact Tennessean reporter Kirsten Fiscus at 615-259-8229 or KFiscus@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KDFiscus.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: William "Billy" Ragsdale: Remains of Marine killed in WWII identified