Only a close inspection of the mileage in their faces lets you know they are old people, maybe even the mid-80s each of them claims. He is retired RAF, but they have been American citizens now for decades.
The company they founded searches out MIAs. Not from the desert wars or Nam or even Korea, but from WW11. They tell me 64,000 Americans are still missing from that war. 64,000.
Fighter planes and bombers crashed in remote Pacific islands a hemisphere away. To find each wreckage, the couple studies maps and photos and records from many decades ago. When they are fairly sure of a location, they hire natives to search them out. In most cases even experienced whites can only survive these hikes just so far.
When a wreck is found, often the lower parts have disintegrated under the industrious damp and insects of the jungle. Sometimes the canopy of the cockpit remains as a shroud over the skeletal remains below. Somewhere the wreck gives up its identity, maybe as a serial number on an engine or a machine gun. From this the crew can be identified. And the couple’s company turns their information over to the army which sends a transport and brings the remains home to families who have waited over long.
Their company seeks no publicity, in fact shuns it so I won’t name it here. It is the most successful of the half dozen or more others that do similar missions. They keep their work quiet because they enter countries as tourists, in order to avoid miles of red tape and endless permits. Members of their team stateside include a doctor who makes sure all inoculations are given and a travel agent who can refer super-adventurers their way. Each mission will cost such a person approximately $11,000, and every chance of injury, disease and heartache. But for those who reunite a family? Jesus, what a prize.
At last, the eighty-somethings are slowing down. But don’t despair – their son has picked up the quest. Out there right now, a search for American heroes continues by a small but dedicated group who are most certainly heroes themselves. Although like most who deserve the term, they deny it.
This is a true story told to my sister and me on a ship bound for Alaska. And this is the reason I cruise.
