Friday, the military staff work on the site of a rescue operation for American soldiers in Pabradė, Lithuania.
Petras Malukas / AFP via Getty Images
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Petras Malukas / AFP via Getty Images
Dozens of soldiers and rescuers go to Lithuania to help the recovery efforts of four American army soldiers whose vehicle was overwhelmed in a marsh for more than five days.
The soldiers, all part of the 1st brigade, 3rd infantry division, based in Fort Stewart in Georgia, disappeared in the early hours of March 25 when he was on a training mission to recover another army vehicle.
The incident occurred in a training area near Pabradė, a city in eastern Lithuania near the border of Bélarus. The vehicle carrying the four soldiers was discovered the next day, buried under a thick layer of mud and water.
The recovery efforts were complicated by the muddy swamp and the solid weight of 70 tonnes of the Hercules armored vehicle of the missing soldiers.
American soldiers attend a sacred mass at the cathedral basilica in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Sunday, for the four American soldiers who disappeared.
Kulbis / AP Mindaugas
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Kulbis / AP Mindaugas
In an update, the army said that the vehicle had continued to flow into the peat bog and was about 13 feet below the surface of the water and was stuck in more than 6 feet of mud, which American officials described as clay.
“It is very complex which tries to arrive at the vehicle itself with the ground here and where the M88 is seated in a marsh-shaped area, under the flotation line”, Brig. General John Lloyd, commander of the US Army Corps of Engineers Division of the North Atlantic, said on Sunday in a statement.
He added: “Not only do we deal with the terrain, but a lot of mud that is above the vehicle, but also the fact that it is 70 tonnes that we try to recover from a swamp or a peat bog.”
A specialized team from the US Navy diving, which arrived on site and made an initial dive on Saturday, also had trouble navigating in the Marais. “Last night, the divers were in the water trying to arrive at the vehicle. We could not do it due to the amount of mud,” said Lloyd.
But on Sunday, the US military said that the diving team had successfully attached a line to a hoist point on the submerged vehicle. The objective is to connect a series of palans to remove the vehicle from the mud.
“This is the first big step towards the successful recovery of the vehicle and bringing our soldiers back to the house,” American army and Africa said in a statement. “We expect this process to take some time, because the amount of pressure and suction of the mud will take an important power to overcome.”
Friday, the military staff work on the site of a rescue operation for American soldiers in Pabradė, Lithuania.
Petras Malukas / AFP via Getty Images
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Petras Malukas / AFP via Getty Images
During last week, the rescue teams worked to eliminate water and the mud from the site using various drainage, digging and dredging techniques. The army said the process had been slow and difficult due to “groundwater infiltration”. The land has not been able to support the heavy equipment necessary to extract the vehicle.
More than 200 staff members were involved in the recovery effort, including American and Lithuanian soldiers, Lithuanian authorities and 55 Polish armed forces engineers, according to the US military.
The families of the four missing soldiers were informed and the US military said it continued to update families on the state of research efforts.
“This tragic situation weighs heavily on us all,” said major-general of the American army last week, the general commander of the 1st armored division, in a statement. “We want everyone to know, we will not stop until our soldiers are found.”
Lithuanian defense officials prayed for reinstatement efforts on holy mass on Sunday, according to the country’s Ministry of Defense.
“The shoulder in the shoulder, we stick together until we find missing soldiers,” the Lithuanian Minister of Defense Dovilė Šakalienė said on Sunday.
