U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Callahan McCann presents a flag to Celia Gray during burial services for her brother, Korean War soldier U.S. Army Cpl. David J. Wishon, Jr. of Baltimore on Friday at Arlington National Cemetery. (Alex Brandon/AP)

The heartbreaking orderliness of Arlington National Cemetery’s endless rows of headstones was interrupted Friday with a new grave, for a long-lost soldier killed 65 years ago in bloody and frozen combat overseas.

Army Cpl. David J. Wishon Jr. of Baltimore was laid to rest with full military honors in Section 60, joining more than 800 soldiers, sailors and Marines who have died in this century’s wars.

Wishon was just 18 years old during the harrowing, multi-day battle at Chosin Reservoir in Korea in late November and early December 1950. He had been in the Army for 14 months, a combat medic assigned to the 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division.

It was a cobbled-together force, historians say, joining other units that were trying to push the North Koreans toward the Yalu River.

When Chinese troops swept down from Manchuria, the regiment was surrounded, caught on the east side of the frozen reservoir, while Marines fought on the west side. Snow was falling, and the temperature plunged to 35 degrees below zero.

Army Cpl. David J. Wishon Jr., 18. On Dec. 1, 1950, Wishon, assigned to Medical Company, 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, was declared missing in action after his unit was heavily attacked by enemy forces in the vicinity of the Chosin Reservoir, North Korea. (Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency)

An estimated 1,500 U.S. servicemen were killed or injured at the Chosin Reservoir out of a force of about 2,500, said Matthew J. Seelinger, chief historian of the Army History Museum. The medical unit to which Wishon belonged was wiped out.

Wishon was classified as missing on Dec. 1, 1950. Three years later, lacking any further information about him, a military review board declared Wishon dead. But the nation had not forgotten him.

In the early 1990s, North Korea returned 208 boxes of “commingled” human remains to the United States. A separate joint U.S.-North Korea recovery effort added more remains. Together, the remains came from at least 600 American servicemen who fought during the war, the defense department said. About 280 of those veterans have been identified.

Wishon’s identity was confirmed by circumstantial evidence and two forms of DNA analysis, which matched mitochondrial DNA from two of his sisters, said Air Force Lt. Col. Holly Slaughter of the Defense Department’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency. Family members did not return requests for comment.

More than 7,800 U.S. Korean War veterans remain unaccounted for. A joint North Korean-U.S. team recovered additional human remains from a reported burial site in Kujang, North Korea, in October 2000, and efforts to identify missing veterans continue.

So much time has passed that sorting through all the bone chips and other evidence is “like a puzzle without a picture,” Slaughter said.

On Friday, six horses, three of them riderless, pulled a caisson carrying Wishon’s casket, which was covered in the American flag and wrapped in plastic as protection from a cold and steady rain.

The flag-draped casket of Army Cpl. David J. Wishon is carried to his final resting place by members of the Army's 3rd Infantry Regiment. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The Army’s Old Guard fired a three-shot rifle volley to honor Wishon. A highly practiced military band and bugler played “America the Beautiful” and taps as about a dozen of Wishon’s relatives looked on, including his sister Celia Gray of Essex Md.

A collection of tourists watched from a distance as a military chaplain offered prayers, the acting superintendent of the cemetery paid her respects and a defense attache from the South Korean Army thanked the family members who had gathered to mourn.

Wishon’s was one of 28 funerals at the cemetery on Friday.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly said that at least 600 U.S. servicemen have been identified from human remains recovered in North Korea. In fact, the remains of at least 600 people were found; of those, about 280 have been identified. The story has been corrected.