Editor’s note: The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) fulfills an extraordinary mission. Its work represents the extreme lengths the U.S. military will go to fulfill its long-stated pledge to never leave anyone behind.
Pentagon files show there are 81,000 American service personnel listed as “Missing-In-Action” since World War II. About 38,000 of these MIAs are deemed “recoverable.”
The mission of the 400 soldiers, sailors, marines, and civilians of DPAA is to find as many of these lost heroes as possible.
To do this, DPAA teams go to the most forlorn corners of the earth – terrestrial teams forge through the densest jungles and the hottest deserts while aquatic teams work the murky depths of the world’s rivers and seas.
This is a glimpse into how they do their work.
U.S. Army Master Sergeant David Craig stood on the deck of the small recovery vessel as it negotiated the waves of the South China Sea. Craig and his colleagues are prepared to undertake a mission more than half a century in the making.
A certified master diver, Craig was born for the water. A native of Hawaii, he spent his youth free diving and spearfishing. Now his mastery of the water was being used for more noble purposes.
Since being assigned to DPAA almost four years ago, Craig had worked missions in the waters of Korea, Vietnam and many of the South Pacific Islands looking for the remains of U.S military MIAs. Craig tells everyone he can about the sense of pride he and his teams feel about what they do.
“This work is among the most fulfilling missions I have had,” he said. “I don’t think I have ever done anything that gives me back this much.”
Aquatic recovery teams face very unique challenges and dangers.
“The aquatic environment is so different wherever you go,” said Craig. “In the water, visibility is usually less than six inches and sometimes less than that as you get near the bottom and stir up sediment.”
Aquatic teams may have to deal with currents that could pull a vessel or divers away from their intended target area, biological or chemical contaminants in the water, and because these are military wrecks, there is always the danger of unexploded ordnance.
Fortunately, numerous dive teams have preceded Craig’s team to this location, so they have a clear picture of the task at hand.
About 80 feet below them on the dark seabed of the South China Sea lay the evidence – and the remains – of a long-ago tragedy.
The warm morning of October 26, 1971, had turned into a hazy humid mid-day and there were storm clouds gathering in the distance as Warrant Officer Albert Raymond Trudeau eased Chopper 66-19143 to a soft landing on the airfield at An Son, a coastal city in South Vietnam.
The New Jersey native had been flying the Chinook helicopter, call sign Warrior 143, on a re-supply mission to U.S. bases along the South Vietnam coast since early that morning.
Trudeau was one of a crew of five, the others being Crew Chief Mickey Eveland and Gunner Thomas Green both 19, Flight Engineer Michael Lautzenheiser, 20, and Chief Warrant Officer Leonard Maquiling 23. Trudeau had just turned 22.
Trudeau had been serving in the Vietnam theater since February.
The stop at An Son brought a welcome respite for the crew. Trudeau and Maquiling made their way to the officer’s club where they met their buddy John Shelton for lunch. All three were members of the 68th Aviation Company, 52nd Aviation Battalion, 17th Aviation Group.
Shelton described Trudeau as “fun-loving, always with a twinkle in his eye and with a camera slung over his shoulder ready to snap photos.”
When lunch was completed, Trudeau and Maquiling rejoined crewmates on the now refueled Chinook. Six passengers joined them for the next leg of their trip, making a total of 10 souls aboard. Warrior 143 took off for a one-hour flight to re-supply Cam Ranh Bay, a key U.S. military fortification to the south.
Trudeau was updated on the weather, but it basically spoke for itself. The dark clouds had rolled in, and it was raining moderately. Heavier rain was expected soon. If there was any concern about the worsening weather, it remained unspoken among those aboard.
After flying about 250 miles, Warrior 143 was spotted by pilots on a nearby aircraft near the city of Nha Trang.
The pilots watched as Warrior 143 continued on its southward trek flying above the roiling waves of the South China Sea. The pilots watched the aircraft disappear into a wall of rain squalls.
Warrior 143 was never seen intact again.
When it was reported about 90 minutes overdue, a search and rescue mission commenced but no with no finding.
Two weeks later, debris washed on to the shoreline of a small island. The debris was quickly identified as coming from Warrior 143 and it strongly suggested the chopper had hit the water at high speed.
The debris included the bodies of one crew member – Manquiling – and three of the passengers. In 1972, those still missing were declared by the Pentagon as “killed in action, remains not recovered.”
But the military never forgot about the missing souls aboard Warrior 143.
The navy made several dives in the area where the chopper was believed to have crashed into the sea. The first was in 1974 but the crash site could not be located.
Divers returned to the scene again and again between 1994 and 2021 with no success. Finally, in 2021, with the use of remote sensing and sonar equipment plus magnetometers and the historical information they had about the crash, the wreck of Warrior 143 was found in about 8o feet of water.
Two sets of remains were also recovered – later identified as crewman Thomas Green and one of the passengers.
When Craig and a recovery team arrived over the wreck site in May of 2024, their aim was to locate the remaining six souls.
Among those on the recovery team with Craig was Dr. Gregory Berg. Berg is a Laboratory Manager for DPAA at its installation in Hawaii, but Berg is frequently in the field with recovery teams.
Berg earned a BA in Anthropology from the University of Arizona, a Masters in Bioarchaeology from Arizona State University and a PhD from the University of Tennessee.
“We had a good and detailed understanding of what the wreckage looked like on the bottom of the sea,” said Berg. “We have an entire group of individuals who are underwater archeologists. This is their specialty.”
Each day, teams of divers went over the side of the boat and headed down to the wreck site. They had the aid of natural light for about the first 40 feet, but as they descend deeper, the light dissipated.
By the time they reach the bottom, it was like swimming in an ink well.
“By the time you get to the bottom, the sediment is stirred up and it is complete blackout conditions and complete sensory deprivation,” explained Craig. Your spacial recognition is all by touch in order to know where you are.”
Many of the DPAA underwater missions augment its personnel with divers from other service branches, especially the U.S. Nacy.
“These guys come out and pour in 16-hour days and thousands of minutes on the bottom just on one site so we can bring home the remains,” said Craig of the divers. “It is a lot of hours and a lot of stress but the amount they will swallow because of the mission set is really awe inspiring.”
The divers have newer underwater visualization technology that helps them see through the blackness. Once on the bottom, divers set a static grid pattern using PVC piping. The grid pattern is set in squares four meters by four meters. When the grid is complete, the divers are ready to begin the delicate task of looking for remains.
More than 40 years in this environment had eroded much of what was once the Chinook helicopter. But the trained eyes of the archeologists, combined with the historical references they had from previous dives, told them where to look.
They were able to identify the area of the wreck where the cockpit was as well as estimate the location of the pilot’s chair – Trudeau’s chair.
“When the divers got to the area that appeared to be the cockpit, they essentially found scattered remains that were disarticulated, but they found most of the body remains,” said Berg. In addition to human remains, the divers found pieces of equipment in that area associated with Trudeau.
However, the team was also looking for the remaining five souls lost on Warrior 143 with Trudeau.
To achieve this, the divers brought a large vacuum to bear on the first square in the grid outlay and began sucking up the seabed into a sealed container. They go down about four meters (12 feet).
The extracted seabed from this first square is then sent to the surface vessel, where team members use mesh screens to meticulously study every inch for evidence of aircraft parts, pieces of material or human remains.
This process is repeated one grid square at a time. In all, 336 square meters of this site will be excavated.
The recovery team continued this work through July.
No other sets of human remains were found on this mission.
While Craig searches for remains under the sea, U.S. Marine Captain Cole Euverard surveyed the dense jungle environment surrounding his terrestrial recovery team. This is his third mission into Laos, where 288 of the 1,573 American MIAs from the Vietnam War are waiting to be found.
Terrestrial teams have their own sets of challenges, and this particular mission seems to embody them all. The team will have to establish its own base camp because, as Euverard described it, “there is no civilization nearby.”
The team has come during the summer and, unlike other sites where they could sleep in a hotel at night and enjoy air conditioning relief, they will be outdoors in tents. This time of year, the temperature rarely drops below ninety degrees even at night. The humidity is almost always at one hundred percent.
A recovery team may be at this site for months, so much must be done before a search for possible remains can begin.
“The first thing we focus on is safety,” said Euverard who has been a marine for six years and with DPAA almost three. “We develop a casualty evacuation plan in case of a heat related incident or injury.”
The team then seeks out a water source and, using pumps and generators, they bring water to their base camp. They have high pressure hoses on site to help excavate the soil when they are ready to begin the search.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency was established in 2015
- DPAA has two sets of field teams:
- first, an investigative team goes to a site to determine if potential remains are there and where they most likely will be;
- second, a recovery team goes to the site to search for the remains based on the investigative team’s recommendations
- DPAA has two scientific laboratories:
- Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska
- Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii
- DPAA keeps a huge collection of DNA samples from families of MIAs which they collect by:
- doing genealogical research to identify families of MIAs
- obtaining samples from family members who attend DPAA updates around the country
- In FY2024 DPAA:
- conducted 46 investigation and recovery missions augmented by 52 private partner investigations.
- identified 172 American MIAs – 128 of the names were released, the remaining 44 names have been withheld pending notification of families.
While his team sets up the logistics for living in the camp, Euverard takes on the diplomatic role of meeting with the leaders of a nearby village and explaining what he and his colleagues will do while they are there.
“I thank them for letting us work here and we discuss whether the villagers can help us,” he said. “If they help, we give them a stipend to compensate them for their work. They are usually happy to help. It is always rewarding to meet them.”
The camp site is cleared as much as possible but local jungle inhabitants are frequent visitors and not always welcome.
“We had plenty of snakes,” said Euverard, “but the locals didn’t care until a cobra was found. Then the villagers shared some concerns.”
Recovery teams are usually comprised of active-military members, a forensic archeologist (called the Scientific Recovery Expert or SRE), linguists, and medical personnel. The team does not come to this site cold. Rather, they have a plan structured by the work of an investigative team that preceded them.
“It is crazy how good they are,” Euverard said of the scientists on the project. “They help us understand the historical background of the incident involved and then they look at anything that could affect the remains.”
What the trained eyes of the scientific teams look at are the terrain and its geographic characteristics – the slopes, the gulleys and craters. They observe rainfall and determine where it flows and where the runoff goes. They catalog any development in the area – whether it be an expansion of the village or roads being build or logging or mining activity.
“We let the scientists do their thing and when they tell us where to dig,” said Euverard, “then it is all hands on deck. We start the excavation process.”
Looking for the remains can be a difficult process if an aircraft accident is involved.
“If you are talking about a foot soldier who was shot and died in a crater which was filled in with dirt during a battle, then eighty years is not very much time in terms of degradation,” Berg explained. “You will likely have a complete skeleton or close to it. So that is relatively easy.
“If you are talking about a plane that ran into the side of a mountain at Mach 2 or was hit by a Surface-to-Air Missile, exploded in mid-air and scattered all over 2,000 square meters, that is a completely different situation.”
The excavation process follows traditional field archaeology methods.
Like their aquatic counterparts, the terrestrial team sets up a grid system at the dig site, using stakes and strings to mark off squares four meters in length and width.
Grid by grid, the unearthed soil is brought in buckets to a team that carefully filters it through mesh screens looking for the same pieces of evidence as the aquatic team.
The work is exhausting in the relentless heat and humidity that hangs over Laos. The team works nine days on and one day off and it requires patience, diligence and determination.
“We bring the excavated findings to our scientific recovery experts,” said Euverard. Maybe nine times out of ten, they tell us the findings are animal bones or maybe petrified wood which looks a lot like human remains. If we think we have found human remains, we take them home for analysis and identification.”
There is always a surge of excitement when scientists believe human remains have been found.
“The whole team gets a morale boost,” Euverard said. “A big part of it is not to give the families false hope, so we keep the discovery of remains to ourselves until we get them back to the lab and get them identified.”
Euverard has met several families of MIAs.
“The families have real grief, and it is sobering to feel it, but it also motivates us to get back in the field,” he said.
Euverard will soon be back in the field – his next quest will take him to a mountaintop in New Guinea where he will lead a team looking for the remains of World War II MIAs.
“This is a really unique assignment,” Euverard reflects. “Everyone who hears about what we do thinks this is a great mission and wants to get involved. It really is a gem.”
The one set of human remains found at the crash site of Warrior 143 were brought back to the DPAA’s Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii where forensic analysis, radio isotope analysis and chest radiograph comparisons are done. DNA testing is done at a separate facility.
The Central Identification Laboratory is the largest skeletal identification laboratory in the world and it is staffed by more than 150 anthropologists, archeologists and forensic odontologists.
Identifying these and other sets of remains is the responsibility of Berg as the lab manager and his colleagues.
“Basically, I herd cats,” Berg said of his work at the lab. “My job is to look at every case that comes in the door and decide on the course of action that the case will take, then monitor it as it goes through the analytical pipeline to make sure the analysis stays on the right track. I then present the findings to the Medical Examiner for his or her consideration for identification.”
Many times, analysis and identification of remains can take years, but the remains found at the Warrior 143 crash site were identified as those of Albert Trudeau in early September.
One reason Trudeau’s remains were identified in only weeks is that they did not have to be compared to a huge universe of Vietnam MIAs.
“We knew everybody who was on that aircraft, so it was a closed population,” said Berg. “We only had to compare these remains to the other guys on the aircraft. The initial identification was made off a positive dental comparison.”
The identification was reinforced by anthropological analysis, circumstantial evidence and the material evidence found on site and completed by a mitochondrial DNA comparison with samples provided by the Trudeau family.
“The ethos of the U.S. military that they never leave a fallen comrade behind is exemplified and lived each day in the service members and civilians assigned to DPAA,” Berg reflected, “and every day we repatriate and identify another individual is another way of keeping that promise to our active military members.”
“We were notified on Monday, September 23, 2024,” recalled Amy Troan, Albert Trudeau’s niece. “We had not heard much in recent years, so when we got the news, we were all so shocked! The reaction was ‘you’ve got to be kidding me!’ We had a family meeting when we found out. Some raw emotions were pulled up.”
Trudeau was the fourth of nine children. His sister Barbara was the last to have heard from him when Trudeau called her just before his fateful flight to discuss what Christmas presents to buy for family members.
“There were stories about my uncle I heard growing up,” said Troan. “His passion was photography and rebuilding cars. My aunts told me he was a kind man – a kind of gentle giant. He always took time to help everyone. One of his sisters – my aunt – said she was surprised how much he would step up to help her.”
Trudeau was a New Jersey native having been born in Teaneck. But he moved with his family to Milwaukee when he was 12. Military service was not strange to the Trudeau family. His father and six uncles all served in World War II.
“We are very thankful to everyone, especially the divers. I am so impressed by the dedication of all of these people to bring every soldier home.”
Troan says the family hopes to bury her uncle at Arlington National Cemetery in the near future but not until DPAA finishes its mission and closes the Warrior 143 dig site. Troan says she is hoping the next recovery team can find the remains of the two service members not yet recovered.
“Then, we will go to Hawaii to the lab and receive the remains,” she said. “All the years my uncle was missing, we always felt there was piece of the family missing. Now we can bring him home.”
