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A team of students, professors, and alumni from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has returned from France, where they spent six weeks searching for soldiers who went missing during World War II.
Led by anthropology professor Bill Belcher, the team worked most days from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Belcher told Nebraska Today the team performed a technique called screening, which involves sifting through dirt to find possible evidence.
The mission is a part of a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Department of Defense. The professors and students who take part in the trip aren’t allowed to reveal exactly what they find, but whatever they collect is transferred to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency lab at Offutt Air Force Base. A group at DPAA is dedicated to identifying missing service members inside the military base located in Bellevue.
The anthropological mission provided students with the opportunity to gain hands-on field experience in real-world forensic anthropology.
Belcher said one of the key lessons for students is understanding the importance of one’s identity and what anthropology can do for them.
“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 told Nebraska Public Media in July.
There are still an estimated 26,000 people missing, but recoverable from World War II.