WEYMOUTH -- For over 80 years, Private Alfred T. Langevin was known simply as X-2756.

Langevin was born in Weymouth in 1915 and baptized at Immaculate Conception Parish. He attended public school until the Great Depression forced him to drop out and work as a grocer. In 1942, as World War II raged, Langevin answered his country's call and enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was assigned to Company E, 2nd Battalion, 109th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division.

He was reported missing in action on Nov. 6, 1944, during the Battle of Hurtgen Forest in Germany. The battle, fought in cold, thick woods, was the longest battle on German soil during World War II and the second-longest in the history of the U.S. Army. At least 33,000 U.S. soldiers were killed or wounded. Langevin, 29, left behind his wife, Helen, and his daughter, Mary, who was only a toddler when he was deployed. Helen later remarried and died in 1993. Mary died in 2017.

Langevin's unidentified remains were discovered amid land mines and terrain scarred by the battle. They were given the name X-2756, and in 1949, they were laid to rest in the Ardennes American Cemetery in Belgium.

In 2018, Langevin's nephew Patrick Thompson received a phone call from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, a government program that identifies the remains of U.S. military personnel missing in action. The DPAA told Thompson that X-2756 could be his uncle. They requested a DNA sample from him and some of Langevin's other surviving relatives. Langevin's remains were exhumed in 2021 for DNA testing, and on July 30, 2025, X-2756 was confirmed to be Alfred T. Langevin.

"It's kind of amazing," said Thompson, now 75 and living in Pennsylvania.

On the gray, damp morning of Nov. 10, Broad Street in Weymouth was lined with U.S. flags and crowds of onlookers who had come to pay their respects. Six Weymouth Police officers on motorcycles escorted a hearse carrying Langevin's remains on a procession through the town. After 81 years, Langevin was finally receiving a proper Catholic burial beside his family, with full military honors.

"It's such a great honor, and the turnout has been remarkable," Thompson said.

Growing up in Weymouth, Langevin's life and disappearance were a "family legend" for Thompson. His mother, as well as Alfred's mother and sisters, "always used to get really misty" when thinking of him.

"He was very generous, and he was a nice young man," Thompson recalled being told about his uncle.

There was a story passed through the family that Langevin had amnesia and went to live peacefully with a family in France. They would say that to cope with the uncertainty of never knowing what really happened. Now, there are no more unknowns.

"This would be remarkable for them to see all this, because missing in action is really heartwrenching for the family," Thompson said.

Thompson, his wife, their daughter, and his grandchildren came to give Langevin a final farewell. His remains were taken care of by McDonald-Keohane Funeral Home, and lay in honor at Weymouth Town Hall on Nov. 9.

"They were so thrilled with this," Thompson said. "World War II, missing in action, hometown boy. They ran wild with it."

Langevin's remains were driven past the neighborhoods where he lived and worked, stopping at Immaculate Conception for a prayer led by Pastor Father Huy Nguyen.

"How wonderful now he's come home and rests in peace," Father Nguyen said, adding, "We thank God for his courage, that he served for his country."

The final stop of the procession was Fairmount Cemetery. Six young soldiers in crisp uniforms removed his flag-draped casket from the hearse and loaded it on a carriage pulled by two large black horses. People carrying flags and signs reading "Welcome home" saluted and put their hands over their hearts as Langevin rode by in the pouring rain. The bass drum of the Greater Boston Firefighter Pipes and Drums thumped solemnly. The bagpipers played patriotic standards.

Langevin was mourned and saluted by people he didn't know and had never met, carried by men who could have been his great-grandchildren. His casket passed places he never lived to see, and was recorded by devices that would have been the stuff of science fiction in his lifetime. Few of the people in the streets and in the cemetery were relatives of Langevin, but under the cold, hard rain, they were there for him.

"The honor that was bestowed upon him today was overwhelming," Thompson said.

At the cemetery, the bagpipes stopped. The only sound came from the unrelenting rain, which soaked through the flag onto the casket. Dog tags hung from its handles. Father Michael Drea read from the Gospel of John: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends."

"How true those words are for the men and women who serve in the United States military, who give themselves fully and completely so that our freedoms, the life that we enjoy, may be protected and preserved," he said. "And we give thanks for the gift that Alfred was and continues to be in his witness, that God blessed him with the ability to portray to all of us through his courageous service, along with his brothers at arms in World War II."

Father Drea led everyone in the Lord's Prayer.

"Alfred, may the angels guide you to paradise, may the martyrs come to welcome you and take you to the holy city, the new and eternal Jerusalem," he said.

Langevin was finally back home, and would remain so for eternity. The honor guard gave him a 21-gun salute.

A bugler played Taps, then "America the Beautiful." The solitary sound drifted over the hills of the cemetery. Thompson was given the folded flag that had graced his uncle's casket.