The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced on March 4 that Marine Raider Pfc. Norton Retzsch, 25, had been accounted for on April 1, 2025 — thanks, in part, to 20-year-old DNA submitted to the military in 2006.
Kim Opitz, Retzsch’s great-niece, a freelance writer who lives in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, told Kare 11 News that her “mother never, never let us forget about him.”
Retzsch, a member of Company C, 1st Marine Raider Battalion, 1st Marine Raider Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Amphibious Corps, was first reported missing in action on July 9, 1943, during the Battle of Enogai on New Georgia in the Solomon Islands.
The New Georgia campaign, dubbed Operation Toenails, was led by Rear Adm. Richmond Turner, with amphibious forces landing at various points on New Georgia on June 30, 1943, beginning a campaign that lasted until the Japanese evacuated Vella Lavella on Oct. 7.
On July 9, Company C came under intense Japanese fire as they rushed toward enemy positions. In his post-war account, “Bloody Ridge and Beyond,” Marine Corps veteran Marlin Groft wrote, “All hell broke loose up front. C Company had blundered into a prepared killing field of Nambu machine gun nests, aided by snipers cleverly concealed in the surrounding trees.”
Retzsch was one of three Marines reported missing after the battle.
According to DPAA, from November to December 1947, units from the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company searched for Retzsch, but after conducting an unsuccessful search of the Bairoko Harbor and Enogai Inlet, the case was closed.
Interred as an unknown at the Enogai Cemetery in 1943, Retzsch was then exhumed twice before final burial in Manila. The Marine’s remains were subsequently designated X-182, while Retzsch’s name was recorded on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines.
In 2019, however, “after researching losses on New Georgia,” according to DPAA, they “recommended disinterment of several Unknowns potentially associated with losses in the Bairoko-Enogai area.”
That’s where Opitz’s DNA, submitted to the military in 2006, came into play.
In 2025, DPAA, using dental and other DNA analysis, identified Retzsch’s remains and contacted his great-niece.
“It was like elation, like I’ve never felt so spiritually high,” Opitz told Kare 11 News. “He’s going to be brought home with honors.”
Retzsch will be buried on April 13, 2026, in Marana, Arizona.
Claire Barrett is an editor and military history correspondent for Military Times. She is also a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.
