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S/Sgt Charles H. Knecht joined the National Guard in Berwick, Pennsylvania on 17 February 1941.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced on 17 September 2025 that S/Sgt Charles H. Knecht has been accounted for.

In late 1944, Knecht was assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion, 109th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division. He was reported missing in action on 6 November 1944 during an intense period of combat near the town of Germeter in the Hürtgen Forest of Germany. The exact circumstances of his loss are unknown. Knecht’s remains were not accounted for after the war and he was declared non-recoverable.

Following the end of the war, the American Graves Registration Command was tasked with investigating and recovering missing American personnel in Europe. Search teams conducted several investigations and recoveries in the Hürtgen Forest between 1946 and 1950, and in April 1946, an AGRC team recovered a set of unknown remains from the woods southwest of the town of Hürtgen, Germany. The remains, later designated X-2482 Neuville, were transferred to the United States Military Cemetery of Ardennes in Belgium for potential identification. All efforts to identify the remains were unsuccessful and they were interred as an Unknown.

In 2019, a DPAA historian analyzed AGRC reports regarding X-2482 Neuville and recommended the remains be disinterred for scientific comparison to several American soldiers missing near Germeter, including Knecht. In August 2022, the Department of Defense and American Battle Monuments Commission exhumed the X-2482 remains and transferred them to the DPAA Laboratory for analysis.

To identify Knecht’s remains, scientists from DPAA used anthropological analysis, as well as circumstantial evidence. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA analysis.

Knecht’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at Netherlands American Cemetery, an American Battle Monuments Commission site in Margraten, Netherlands, along with the others still missing from World War II. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.

S/Sgt Knecht was given his final resting place on 14 October 2026 in Elan Memorial Park in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania.