Three of four missing U.S. soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division were found dead, an Army spokesperson confirmed, after an all-hands effort by U.S. and Lithuanian forces pulled their M88 Hercules recovery vehicle from a deep bog in a Lithuanian swamp Monday.
One soldier remained unaccounted for a week after the four-man crew went missing during an exercise in the Pabrad? training area.
The four soldiers disappeared March 25 when their M88A2 armored recovery vehicle vanished after being dispatched to repair and tow another immobilized tactical vehicle.
“The soldiers we have lost in this tragedy were not just soldiers. They were a part of our family. Our hearts are heavy with a sorrow that echoes across the whole Marne Division, both forward and at home,” said Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie, the commander of the 3rd Infantry Division in Fort Stewart, Georgia. “We stand in grief with the families and loved ones of these extraordinary ‘Dogface Soldiers’ during this unimaginable time. But the search isn’t finished until everyone is home.”
The recovery of the four soldiers and the 63-ton M88 comes after a huge surge of local experts and equipment and U.S. engineering and search teams to the swampy site. To aid in the search, hundreds of soldiers from the U.S., Lithuania and Poland converged on the site, including local experts with ground penetrating radar and a special U.S. Navy dive team from Commander Task Force-68 in Rota, Spain, was flown in.
As far-flung experts like the dive team and engineering units arrived at a nearby airport, U.S. Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters were waiting to fly them to the search site.
The M88A2 — among the largest tracked vehicles in the Army’s armor arsenal — was swallowed by the swampy peat bog on the Pabrad? grounds. Why the huge vehicle ended up off of established roads was unclear and Army officials have said investigations of the accident are underway. Officials have said the M88 may have been encased in mud and black pond waters as deep as 15 feet, though reports have varied on that depth.
Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, the commander of the 1st Armored Division, which has led the search, said that the Navy divers set up communication links with another dive team in Hawaii that regularly works in mud and swamps with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
“They do a lot of recovery missions in heavy swamps and mud,” Taylor said. “They just completed a similar mission in Papau New Guinea. We had our dive team talking to their dive team about techniques of digging through the mud.”
To reach the vehicle, teams had to first shore up dryland around the acres bog and then begin to drain the swamp away with pumps and equipment until divers could descend into the “mud, clay, and sediment with zero visibility,” the Army said, to hook steel cables to the vehicle. Those cables, the Army said, were attached to two other M88A2s to pull the lost one up, but at least one of the tugs lost traction during the two-hour pull. Several bulldozers were then attached to provide additional grip.
With the M88 out of the mud, the dive team has now begun a grid search in the remainder of the bog to find the final missing soldier.
“We will not stop until we find our soldiers and return them to their families,” Taylor said.
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