Bodies have been recovered for three of the four soldiers missing along the Lithuania-Belarus border for the past six days. As of Monday, March 31, “rescue teams are still searching” for the fourth missing service member. No cause of death has yet been revealed but the vehicle was found buried under thick mud and hasn’t been easy to extract.
Not just soldiers
The men we lost in this tragedy, Major General Christopher Norrie notes in an official statement, “were not just soldiers – they were a part of our family.”
The search, he insists, “isn’t finished until everyone is home.” They were taking part in drills near the city of Pabradė, Lithuania.
The search and rescue mission to locate and recover the missing soldiers included units from U.S. Army and Navy along with Lithuanian and Polish Armed Forces.
The muddy swamp surrounding the incident scene requires “tremendous resources.”
It’s not clear how the four soldiers got isolated from everyone else but they went missing on the morning of March 25. At the time, they were “carrying out an exercise in their M88A2 Hercules.”
Those are described as “a large armored vehicle that is designed to recover damaged tanks and other vehicles from battlefields.” They were supposed to be practicing.
Repair and tow
As the recovery crew is learning fast, the Lithuanian bog is much more of a challenge than they were prepared for. That appears to be a factor in what happened to the soldiers. They had been tasked with “conducting a mission to repair and tow an immobilized tactical vehicle.”
They seem to have quickly found themselves immobilized themselves, then sucked down into mud which was a lot more like quicksand.
Their vehicle was located March 26 but still hasn’t been pulled entirely clear of the muck. “U.S. Navy divers were brought in to hook cables onto the sunken vehicle.” Crews had to maneuver “through thick layers of mud, clay, and sediment with zero visibility.”
Soldiers have been working furiously ever since. “Those cables were then connected to another two M88A2 Hercules, which also started to slide into the bog, leading to several bulldozers being called on.”
Since then, “Other heavy construction equipment including excavators and sluice and slurry pumps” were assembled, along with “technical experts” and “several hundred tons of gravel and earth.”
All four were assigned to the 1st Armoured Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division. The exact identities of the soldiers are being held until “their next of kin are informed.“
