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When the last US military cargo jet flew out of Afghanistan in August, marking the end of the US’ longest war, it also signalled a largely overlooked accomplishment. For the first time in the nation’s history, a major conflict was ending without the US military leaving any troops behind: no one missing in action behind enemy lines, and no nameless, unidentified bones to be solemnly interred in the Tomb of the Unknowns.
It is a stunning change from previous wars that ended with thousands of troops forever lost, their families left to wonder what had happened to them.
Christopher Vanek, a retired colonel who commanded the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment, spent a combined 6 1/2 years deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, and took part in a number of high-profile searchand-rescue operations. He said rescues became the priority. Even for low-ranking troops with little strategic importance, he said, the military spared no effort to find the missing.
When two navy sailors were missing in 2010 in Logar province, south of Kabul, “all combat operations came to a screeching halt,” Vanek recalled. “We had 150 aircraft working on trying to find them. We refocused our entire effort from fighting and killing al-Qaida to recovering these men.” The bodies of both sailors were located and retrieved several days later.
There are several reasons no one was left behind this time. In Afghanistan, combat smoldered more often than it blazed, and lacked the large-scale chaos that led to many losses in the past. Modern DNA analysis can identify any service member from a sample of just a few shards of bone. And unlike the jungles of Vietnam or the beaches of Tarawa Atoll, it was comparably difficult to lose sight of a comrade in the dry, open terrain of Afghanistan.
But the driving factor, experts say, is a military culture that has changed considerably since the draft ended in the 1970s. That culture now makes the recovery of troops — dead or alive — one of the military’s highest priorities. “It has come to be seen as almost a sacred commitment from the nation to those who serve,” Vanek said. “It’s hard to overstate the amount of resources that were committed to look for someone who was lost.”
“Straight rescues are hard as hell because the enemy holds all the cards,” said Jimmy Hatch. World War II left 79,000 Americans unaccounted for. The Korean War, another 8,000. Vietnam, 2,500 more. In Korea and Vietnam, rescue efforts were few and many US troops wasted away in prison, facing torture. After Vietnam, though, the nation’s attitude began to change, according to Mark Stephensen, whose father was a fighter pilot who was shot down over Vietnam in 1967.
Stephensen was12 when his father’s jet crashed, and his family was given little information. Desperate for resolution, the family banded together with others to form the National League of POW/MIA Families, lobbying politicians and buttonholing generals in the halls of the Capitol to demand action. Over time, they made their cause a must-support bipartisan issue. “Before that, people who were missing in action were not a priority,” said Stephensen, who is now vice president of the group.
Change also came from within the military, said Leonard Wong, a retired Army War College researcher who studied the growing importance that the military places on leaving no one behind. When the military became an all-volunteer force in the 1970s, he said, conventional troops adopted many of the professional values of the elite forces like the Green Berets, including a line from the Ranger Creed: “I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy.”
It is a stunning change from previous wars that ended with thousands of troops forever lost, their families left to wonder what had happened to them.
Christopher Vanek, a retired colonel who commanded the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment, spent a combined 6 1/2 years deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, and took part in a number of high-profile searchand-rescue operations. He said rescues became the priority. Even for low-ranking troops with little strategic importance, he said, the military spared no effort to find the missing.
When two navy sailors were missing in 2010 in Logar province, south of Kabul, “all combat operations came to a screeching halt,” Vanek recalled. “We had 150 aircraft working on trying to find them. We refocused our entire effort from fighting and killing al-Qaida to recovering these men.” The bodies of both sailors were located and retrieved several days later.
There are several reasons no one was left behind this time. In Afghanistan, combat smoldered more often than it blazed, and lacked the large-scale chaos that led to many losses in the past. Modern DNA analysis can identify any service member from a sample of just a few shards of bone. And unlike the jungles of Vietnam or the beaches of Tarawa Atoll, it was comparably difficult to lose sight of a comrade in the dry, open terrain of Afghanistan.
But the driving factor, experts say, is a military culture that has changed considerably since the draft ended in the 1970s. That culture now makes the recovery of troops — dead or alive — one of the military’s highest priorities. “It has come to be seen as almost a sacred commitment from the nation to those who serve,” Vanek said. “It’s hard to overstate the amount of resources that were committed to look for someone who was lost.”
“Straight rescues are hard as hell because the enemy holds all the cards,” said Jimmy Hatch. World War II left 79,000 Americans unaccounted for. The Korean War, another 8,000. Vietnam, 2,500 more. In Korea and Vietnam, rescue efforts were few and many US troops wasted away in prison, facing torture. After Vietnam, though, the nation’s attitude began to change, according to Mark Stephensen, whose father was a fighter pilot who was shot down over Vietnam in 1967.
Stephensen was12 when his father’s jet crashed, and his family was given little information. Desperate for resolution, the family banded together with others to form the National League of POW/MIA Families, lobbying politicians and buttonholing generals in the halls of the Capitol to demand action. Over time, they made their cause a must-support bipartisan issue. “Before that, people who were missing in action were not a priority,” said Stephensen, who is now vice president of the group.
Change also came from within the military, said Leonard Wong, a retired Army War College researcher who studied the growing importance that the military places on leaving no one behind. When the military became an all-volunteer force in the 1970s, he said, conventional troops adopted many of the professional values of the elite forces like the Green Berets, including a line from the Ranger Creed: “I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy.”
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