US Military Searches German Battlefields for Fallen Soldiers

[Skybird]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,druck-577244,00.html

Hm. I'm split over this. After that long time, maybe one should let them rest. Tastes a bit like trophy-hunting.

[RickC Sniper]

I'm not split over it.

Enough time has passed. Let them rest in peace.

[Platapus]

That is a tough moral question, but I also lean toward letting the dead rest in peace.

If, during some excavation remains are uncovered, then an effort can be made to recover. But not to go out hunting. :nope:

"Good frend for Iesus sake forbeare To digg the dust enclosed here Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones And curst be he yt moves my bones". (Inscription on Shakespeare's tomb, Stratford-upon-Avon).

[August]

For the cost of just three longbow helicopters a year we fulfill a promise to our troops that we will never forget them, that we will always keep trying to find them and bring them home. It's a small, tiny, minuscule price to pay, imo.

[bookworm_020]

We have gone through the same question here in Australia (and England to some extent as well) They discovered pits which the germans had buried the bodies of Australian and British Dead after the battle of Fromels in WW1.

It has been decided to try and identify the remains found and reintern them (either at the same location where they were found or in nearby war cemetaries). IT was consided that the least they could do was to try and identify them and give some closure to families, but the bodies to remain in France.

[Zero Niner]

I don't think there's anything ignoble about this. It's a sanctioned effort to discover the remains of the many MIAs of the war, not a trophy-hunting expedition.

So long as they (the remains) are treated with honour & dignity, I think it is perfectly reasonable. And I think there'll be some who are grateful.

She even knows for whom she is doing the work. The pilot's mother is still waiting, back in Texas. She has spent 64 years hoping for certainty about the fate of her son.
Quoted from the article that Skybird linked.