Corporal Shepler was a member of Company K, 3rd Battalion, 187th Airborne Infantry Regimental Combat Team. He was seriously wounded by the enemy in North Korea on November 29, 1950 and died of those wounds later that day. His remains were not recovered. Between 1990 and 1994, North Korea returned 208 boxes of commingled human remains to the United States, which we now believe to contain the remains of at least 600 U.S. servicemen who fought during the war. North Korean documents included in the repatriation indicate that some of the remains were recovered from the vicinity where Shepler was believed to have died. DNA analysis and circumstantial evidence were used in the identification of his remains in 2016. His name remains permanently inscribed on the Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial.