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Pvt De Shong was employed by the Associated Transportation Company in Baltimore before he enlisted in November 1943. He was sent overseas in July 1944.

In a letter written by him on 19 February 1945, he said that the town where he was quartered was "quiet" and that he was looking forward to going to the movies the next night. He died of wounds two days later.

Per author and 29th ID historian Joseph Balkoski in The Last Roll Call: A platoon of the 115th Infantry’s Antitank Company, bivouacked well over a mile behind the front, was resting amid the relatively luxurious comfort of a decrepit Koslar row house cellar when a Luftwaffe bomber came over and dropped two 500-pound bombs on the village. One scored a direct hit on the edifice occupied by the platoon, instantly killing four members and wounding eleven more—roughly 10 percent of the company. The four unlucky ones were T/5 Glenn Bridges, PFC Robert Arrington, PFC Dayton Davis, and PFC Irving De Shong.