NORWOOD — For more than six decades, Rosemary Farrell visited a cemetery plot near her childhood home in Arlington with a granite marker but no grave. It was for her older brother, whose fate was known only as the US Army presumed it: death on a German battlefield in 1944.

Yesterday, a military honor guard delivered John J. Farrell Jr.’s remains to his family, 66 years after he went missing in action during the Battle of Hurtgen Forest.

For his loved ones, Farrell’s return is an unimagined blessing, a release from years of lingering regret, and a proper chance to say goodbye.

“He’s home,’’ said Rosemary Farrell, an 84-year-old who fondly recalls riding on the back of her brother’s bike as a young girl. “Home at last.’’

Tomorrow, Farrell, who was born in 1922, will be laid to rest with full military honors in a family plot in Norwood. An Army blanket will line the casket, and a military uniform will cover his remains.

His return marks another hard-won victory in the painstaking, improbable campaign to recover the far-flung remains of fallen American soldiers in foreign wars.

“I think it’s beautiful, in a way,’’ said Barbara Wilson, 85, another sister.

Farrell’s remains were discovered in September 2008, when a German explosives team swept a proposed construction site in the village of Kommerscheidt for ordnance left over from one of World War II’s longest battles.

After discovering an American combat boot, they excavated the property and found the bones of Farrell, who was a staff sergeant, and another American soldier.

A US team working nearby completed the recovery and transported Farrell’s remains to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command headquarters in Hawaii to confirm their identity.