UNL team lands in France to help find remains of WWII plane crash

The team, made up of students, staff and veterans, isn’t just looking for remains.

It’s also looking for any material evidence that can strengthen the identification process of soldiers still missing. Those materials may include identification tags, wallets, ID bracelets and rank insignia, as well as human remains.

William Belcher, the lead on the project and UNL associate professor in anthropology, said it’s important to know the team is not in Europe as tourists.

“The family has still passed down these losses, and they still grieve, in a sense, for those members that never came home. And so we're trying to give them some closure to that grief and bring these people home,” Belcher said.

The project is funded primarily through the U.S. Department of Defense. Some of the findings will be sent back to Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue for forensic testing.

This is about the fourth time Belcher has participated in a project like this, and he is currently working on facilitating one in India as well. Belcher said his goal with continuing these projects is to train the next generation of students to pick up this work when he retires.

About 13 students, many from the forensic anthropology department, applied for the opportunity.

Ph.D candidate Alicia Lawson and recent master’s graduate Mack Cristino were two students granted the opportunity to work on the mission.

“Families have been impacted by a missing-in-action relative for generations, and that grief has been passed down,” said Lawson, who is working as a material evidence specialist. “So just remembering that, while we are part of this investigation for little over a month of our lives, some people had their lives shaped and defined by these very incidents.”

Cristino said participating in the project is something he will remember for the rest of his life. Before this project, his experience was primarily in labs doing behind-the-scenes work.

“We're, in essence, just trying to honor the sacrifice of our missing servicemen by these recovery missions,” he said.

Lawson and Cristino said one main thing they are all keeping in mind is respect.

“These people are probably the same age as us, if not a little younger,” Lawson said. “So coming at it from that perspective is a good mentality to hold on, to make sure we are remembering to honor their sacrifice [in a] respectful manner.”

“Here we find a lot of material, maybe material evidence and records and things like that, but it's our utmost priority to remember and to treat those with respect,” Cristino added.

Belcher also worked with local law enforcement to be connected with military veterans to participate as well.

Belcher said he knows the grief from lost loved ones can transcend generations. He worked in a mass grave in the South Pacific where he and his team recovered the remains of 20 people, who were later buried in the Arlington National Cemetery.

“I've tried to talk to my students about is when we have genocide and all these other horrible crimes that happen,” Belcher explained. “One of the reasons these things happen is people want to erase the identity of the individual, and one of the ways that we can fight that is to find these individuals, identify them, and give them their name back, so they're no longer invisible.”