The rescue of the bodies of four American soldiers was exhausting. Everyone was nervous, he says

The text was originally published in The Washington Post.

The search group embarked on a survey in which she sought any traces of four American soldiers and their 70-ton vehicle. The group disappeared deep in the forests of Pabradé last night, near the Lithuanian border with Belarus.

The traces of the Hercules M88 armored vehicle in the soft land along the forest road discovered 1. Sergeant Matthew Riley. They led to the swamp with a diameter of barely ten meters, but on the other hand they did not continue. On the surface was a military bag and a bottle of lubricant on weapons.

At the same time, a strong fuel odor spread over the site. The team that watched the swamp was at first skeptical that a massive military machine could disappear in such a small swamp. One soldier from the search group was also wading the swamp, but Riley finally said that someone simply had to sink into the mud.

Over the next seven days, dozens of people from four countries have diverted into a muddy swamp to discover all missing men. A mission full of extreme environmental and technical challenges embodied the risk and ingenuity, but also the belief in the military imperative that every soldier must return home.

« Without our boys, we wouldn’t leave, » said Carlos Hernandez, who led the US Navy diving team on the spot, for The Washington Post.

The Washington Post article is based on interviews with more than a dozen people who either participated in the operation or knew four soldiers who died in the tragedy of 25 March. It was a 25-year-old José Dueñeza, 25-year-old rotary Edvin F. Franco; 21-year-old Slobodník Dante D. Taitan and 28-year-old rotary Troy S. KnuSon-Collins. The effort to talk to their families was unsuccessful.

There is currently an investigation to find out how the crew has been lost, and a separate investigation focuses on security information, said Major General Curtis Taylor, Commander 1. According to Taylor, part of the investigation will focus on whether it was appropriate for the soldiers to be sent to the forest themselves.

Georgia Franc, whose husband was among the killed, told CBS News that she was asking answers to questions about this decision.

« They should never have been there, » she said.

Extensive danger

There are approximately 80,000 US soldiers across Europe, after Russian invasion on Ukraine in 2014 and a full -fledged war which Mask Ukraine unleashed in 2022, the training among the Allies NATO He has intensified.

However, few countries are worried about Russian aggression more than Lithuaniaa small Baltic country adjacent to Belarus, an ally of Moscow. In the framework of rotary deployment, there are still about two thousand American soldiers.

Since February, there has been 1. The armored brigade 3. Infantry Division. Their deployment is based on training in a military reserve near Pabradé, a large area of ​​hills, marshes and dense forests.

The artillery unit of the brigade took part in night training with howitzers when their tactical vehicle fell into the mud. The task of pulling it out was given to Dueñez, Franco and Taitano, who were maintenanced by Abrams tanks and had experience in pulling out non -functional vehicles. All three were trained to rescue vehicles at night, and this was a valuable real opportunity to further improve these skills.

They put on the Hercules M88, an armored vehicle built on a tank chassis with a heavy towing system, and set out on the forest path. He was also with them KnuSon-Collins, an artillery mechanic in a brigade who helped the crew.

Their transfer in the early morning was slow, and the heavy Hercules M88 was able to reach a top speed of only 40 to 50 kilometers per hour. When the radio connection with the crew was lost, the search began that led to a muddy peat bog.

A team of six Lithuanian divers was sent to the place, which they found worried. The harmless looking peat bog under the surface hid a widespread danger.

The vegetation in the swamp, which was supplied with water from a nearby pond, has partially disintegrated. The consistency consisting of mud, sticks and grass caused any movement in the swamp was an extremely exhausting – as if divers were wading with drying concrete. The soldiers did not see through the masks and could not get enough air through the regulator.

At the same time, the Hercules M88, which can carry hundreds of liters of fuel, also released a significant amount into the water, which immediately depreciated the equipment of the divers and limited the time they could be immersed.

The divers for the first time came into contact with something steel at a depth of about five meters. However, the commanders who were afraid that it could be a long -lost military vehicle or a farm tractor wanted to be sure that it was Hercules M88. After examining a similar vehicle, divers subsequently stated that they were sure they had touched the characteristic crane of Hercules M88.

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However, problems have grown. The vehicle buried in several meters of mud was located above the high -pressure gas pipeline, but continued to decline. There was rapidly fear that every wrong step could cause a huge explosion. The pipe -shutting out commands.

The commanders assessed that the likelihood of catching soldiers would decrease, the deeper the vehicle will settle, so they focused on the dilution of the mud. On the spot they scattered 237 tons of gravel to help stabilize the soil, and the engineers cut the surrounding trees. The pumps were humming continuously.

A temporary dam was also built around the peat bog, which was later proved to be a futile attempt to drain the swamp. Officials estimated that more than 260,000 liters had been drained, but the water was still penetrating from the surroundings.

Blind operation

The rescue team grew up every hour and eventually reached several hundred. There were 250 members of American services, 160 Lithuanian soldiers and civilians, 50 Polish soldiers and teams of working dogs from Estonia and Lithuania.

About three thousand kilometers away, in the Spanish city of Rota, a team of US Navy divers received an urgent order to fly the continent. When the sailors arrived at a meeting with their Lithuanian colleagues, they absorbed the seriousness of the task. Some have first participated in picking up human remains.

Their aim was to attach two towing ropes to the armored vehicle to pull it out of the swamp. However, divers had to find the way to the submerged vehicle exclusively by touch, and the ropes had to be attached to two specific places of the armored vehicle. To practice everything, they climb around the same type of Hercules M88 with their eyes closed and learned his outlines.

In the mud, divers were formed in front of them by means of a stream of water from the fire hose tunnel, in which they could more easily maneuver. It was a strenuous process, during which the soldiers were difficulty digging through the mud, feeling their strength gradually leaving their hands.

It took more than two hours to connect one tow rope to the correct point, and then 15 minutes until they rewind to the surface again by means of a fire hose.

« We felt as if it was wrapped in the ground, » said the building mechanic of 2 classes Steven Tausch as he described the dive into the mud.

Followed by a second dive. On the surface of the team commander Hernandez with voltage expected every novelty, which despite strenuous breathing informed the radio. And although the divers were attached to the surface, they knew that in an emergency people would not have to pull them out of the swamp in time.

« Everyone was on the spot, » Hernandez said.

Tausch’s team took 90 minutes to get to the second right point. The vehicle has been secured.

« Get me out of here, » Tausch said over the radio.

Two more equal vehicles and two bulldozers were needed to pull Hercules M88 out of the mud. Inside were the remains of three soldiers: Dueñeza, Franco and Taitan.

The fourth, Knunson-Collins, was still missing.

Pair of shoes

At home in Battle Creek in Michigan, KnuSon-Collins’ family felt a mixture of fears and optimism. He was a talented swimmer, they judged. Maybe he got out?

« I want to be positive and hope it is somewhere else, still alive, » his father Robert Collins said to the home media.

A drone was equipped with a ground radar to explore what was hiding in the swamp. He then discovered a helmet.

In the early morning of April 1, two teams of search and rescue dogs from the Estonian police and border office arrived. The Risto Handler Head of the Risto Kotkas entered a small inflatable boat with a four -year -old German Shepherd Maik.

The smells that Maik needed to track down was distracted by the wind, but also masked the amount of fuel in the water.

Maik was trained to bark when he finds someone living or dead. Not barking. Kotkas watched him closely and searched for any gentle body language – the tailing of the tail, anxiety or the effort to lick the water surface. Kotkas and Maik were circling around until all these signs were shown in close proximity and the handler showed a place to be examined.

Using an excavator, the rescue team was carefully buried into the marsh. Brigadier General John P. Lloyd, who, as commander of the North Atlantic Division of the General Corps of the US Army, supervised this process, remembered that he saw a few shoes.

« I knew we had it right away, » Lloyd said.

Ten minutes of silence

Thousands of people gathered on April 3 in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, where the funeral car escorted the remains of the soldiers during their first stage of the road home. There was also Lithuanian among them President Gitanas Nauseda, who reminded the painful past of the country under the Soviet occupation.

« In our history, we have experienced various tests, so we understand well what is loss, what is death, and what is an honest duty, » he said in his speech.

At one point, members of the 5th escarons of the 7th Equestrian Regiment – the units to which the deceased soldiers were assigned – were dead and ten minutes were silent, Captain Madyson Wellens said.

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Franco, a joke from Glendale, California, excelled in his big smile and oversized glasses, said Sergeant Jeremiah Benetti. Wellens remembered that Franco was talking to admiration of her wife, who had brought up their little child at home during his commitment.

According to Riley, Dueñez of Jolieta in Illinois was supposed to put in congenital donation again inoperative tanks. Dueñez voluntarily reported to various tasks than any other soldier whom Riley knew, including a fateful peat mission when he went to help the crew, although it was not a member.

KnuSon-Collins was similarly inflamed, said Roto Caleb Cutting. They often talked about their children, recalled cutting, according to which it was clear that Knunson-Collins can no longer wait to return home to Georgia, where he would see his family.

The youngest soldier in the group, Taitano, a native of Guam, was known for two passions: preparing canned meat with rice and mastering on his old car. In the parking lot in front of the barracks he often offered oil exchange, which the older commander of the unit did not like, but at the same time they were amazed by his skill.

Freedom of Ephraim ADAKWAAH, who with Taitan, underwent training in eliminating the consequences of traffic accidents, said he felt the death of colleagues as a loss in the family.

« It’s something that hurt me deeply, » he said.