When the remains of soldiers from ancient wars are identified, it becomes increasingly difficult to trace their family members

By the early 1970s, the POW/MIA movement had convinced the federal government to make extraordinary efforts to search for the remains of Vietnam War soldiers missing in action and return them to grieving families.

Half a century later, the complex machinery assembled for this mission – cutting-edge laboratories, motivated teams of forensics and DNA experts, archaeologists, historians and mortuary officials – has almost entirely changed who it brings home. …and who she brings back. at their home.

Now, typical cases are like that of Staff Sgt. Robert J. Ferris Jr.

Ferris was a 20-year-old turret gunner aboard an Army Air Force B-17 bomber when it was shot down over France on December 20, 1942. He was reported missing in action .

Using historical documents, his remains were recovered from a cemetery in France in 2019. After an elaborate forensic process, including a DNA match, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) formally identified his remains last September.

Then an Army mortuary affairs specialist called Barbara Weiss of New Bern, North Carolina, trying to identify the official next of kin.

“Everyone they thought about died,” said Weiss, who is Ferris’ niece and was born years after his death.

The mortuary specialist asked him if his grandparents or aunt were still alive.

“And they were asking about my Uncle Al,” she said. “He was gone. Then they said 'Burtress'. I said, 'That's my mother.' “Can we talk to her? And I said she died too.”

“Then I said, 'I'm the only one…I'm the next of kin,'” Weiss said.

Weiss agreed to accept her uncle's remains. She helped Army officials organize military funerals and a graveside service.

William “Shorty” Cox is a senior mortuary affairs specialist, one of four specialists in the Army's Past Conflict Repatriation Branch. They contact families when a long-missing soldier is identified, then help guide the case until the burial is complete.

In 14 years of work, Cox has seen a shift away from Vietnam War cases.

The Department of Defense's goal is to make at least 200 identifications per year from past conflicts dating back to World War II. But the number of salvageable remains from the Vietnam War has dwindled to perhaps a few hundred. In the meantime, tens of thousands of people could be victims of previous conflicts.

So far this year, DPAA has identified 55 cases across all services from World War II, 16 from the Korean War and just one from the Vietnam War.

Because wars go further back in history, this changed the process Cox and his colleagues used to contact family members.

“I would say about 60 to 70 percent of those we deal with now have never known the soldier,” he said. “The rule extends further to cases involving great-nieces, great-nephews and cousins.”

In the vast majority of cases, he explained, the first family member contacted is willing to serve as the official next of kin. It helps that the military covers all costs.

But more and more often, loved ones are so distant and feel so little connection to the dead soldier that they don't want to bother them.

“I have a case right now where I've met with 16 family members, and I can't get a single one of them to agree to take over burying the soldier,” Cox said. “They don’t know them, they are busy. And they just don't do it. I am now working with the last member of my family.

If he says no, the soldier will benefit from a “presumptive army burial,” which means that the army will take the place of the family, making decisions on where and how he will be buried.

This happened last fall, when no family members could be found for the funeral of Sgt. Bernard J. Sweeney Jr., also died during World War II.

There were two alive when the military conducted DNA tests on the family members to compare them to the remains found. Both died before Sweeney was identified.

However, the soldier's funeral was held in large numbers. The Army made arrangements with a funeral home on Long Island, New York, and many townspeople, members of veterans groups, first responders and Boy Scouts came.

“The funeral home we used was a mile and a half from the cemetery, and the funeral procession was so long it took them an hour to get to the cemetery,” Cox said. “There were 1,000 people at the funeral.”

Sarah Wagner, a professor of anthropology at George Washington University, says that even if no immediate family members are alive, the interest in fully accounting for the missing and bringing them home remains real.

“There is this moment at a homecoming and a memorial or a funeral where the national and the local are intertwined in this project of belonging,” said Wagner, the author of What Remains: Bringing back America's missing from the Vietnam War.

The national aspect consists in particular of making current soldiers understand that the country appreciates their service. The service also means something to those who attend, like in a memorial she attended at Arlington National Cemetery, where no one knew the fallen service member.

“From what I could see, there wasn't a dry eye, and people were feeling incredibly emotional,” she said. “These recovery efforts, when they finally bring someone home and there's no immediate family member, there's always a sense that there's an obligation on the community side and the family side to take care of this person. »

Wagner said it's still possible for people to care about a service member they don't know and feel involved in holding society together.

“Maybe they remember someone else's grief, or they were told about their grandfather's grief,” she said. “There's a sense of this vast military enterprise that went to the ends of the world, and it's like he went to the side of a mountain and he found this tooth and sent it home.”

Jay Price

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American Home Front

Dozens of people who never knew the deceased, including many members of local chapters of veterans groups, joined Weiss and a few other family members at Ferris' funeral service.

Rick Miller, former president of the local chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America, said he has attended about 30 such ceremonies involving soldiers and veterans he did not know.

“I think the military, regardless of seniority, is a family where we are all connected to serving our country,” he said. “I feel honored to come to these things.”

Also in attendance were more than two dozen members of the Patriot Guard Riders, a national group that provides motorcycle escorts to fallen service members, veterans and first responders.

George Hayden was one of them. He added that this duty was all the more important since there was little or no family left.

“We come and we become their family,” he said.

Weiss, the fallen soldier's niece, happily took on her unexpected role and helped organize things like the funeral home's display of faded photos of Ferris as a child, teenager and soldier.

The photos were passed down to him, as was his responsibility to Ferris, from one parent to the next.

She says the military's carefully orchestrated process transformed her into something more like what people usually think of as next of kin.

“I didn’t know him, but now I know him,” she said after the funeral ceremony, sitting next to Ferris’ casket, holding the flag that had draped it in her lap. “My grandmother was such a loving person. Just like my aunts and my other uncle. And so he must be a part of all of that, it has rippled through the whole family line, so he must be all of that too. »

This story was produced by the American Homefront Project, a public media collaboration reporting on American military life and veterans.

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