Not long after lunch, they laid themselves to rest in a soft green pasture, this 10-person team that traveled from the far side of the globe to probe for the remains of a man missing for more than six decades.
“We’re not here for ourselves,” Army Sgt. 1st Class Ron Baker says shortly before the pastoral pause. “We’re here for the families of the veterans of past conflicts who are missing in action.”
Baker, a veteran of three combat tours, isn’t one to mince words. While Baker values what he and the others are doing in this cow pasture in western Germany, his soul seems to be elsewhere, Iraq and Afghanistan in particular. You can sense it in his mud-speckled face, and though reluctant to admit as much at first, Baker eventually does.
“They know where my heart is,” he says. “It’s over there.”
“Those piles of dirt over there,” Sprague says, pointing to a few nearby mounds, “it’s all stuff we have sifted through, and we only found a few bits and pieces (of evidence).”
At this stage, JPAC officials usually don’t discuss if they have unearthed any human remains. That comes later, back in Hawaii, where potential remains are tested, analyzed and reviewed by other anthropologists. It’s an exhaustive process that entails layers of scrutiny and a lot of lab work, including DNA testing.
Sprague’s team has found a number of items that seem to confirm a plane crash. The pieces range from shards of the cockpit canopy glass and bits of a parachute to part of a fuel pump and the pilot’s leather headgear.
“We were [sweeping] with metal detectors and digging up all the metal hits,” Sprague says. “One of them was the snap on the helmet.”............Rest Found Here
Not just soldiers, who fight in War, turn up missing, most forever, but also many residents where Wars are fought!
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