A specialized diving team of the US Navy and a unit of engineering for Polish armed forces went to a training site in Lithuania on Friday to help recover four American soldiers who were missing on Tuesday.
The American and Lithuanian staff still worked on Friday to access the site where the armored vehicle Hercules M88 of the soldiers was found 15 feet under water Wednesday in a marsh on a training site near Pabrade, Lithuania. The thick mud and the soft ground took the emergency staff to access the vehicle and complicate the recovery effort for several days.
Major-General Curtis Taylor, commanding the general of the 1st armored division, said on Friday that it would be a “long and difficult recovery operation”.
“The area around the site is incredibly humid and marshy and does not support the weight of the equipment necessary for the recovery of the 70 -ton vehicle without significant engineering improvements,” said US Army Europe and Africa in the press release. “The emptying of the area was slow and difficult due to the oozing of the groundwater.”
Friday, the second full day of the recovery mission, experts in the field of the US Army Corps of Engineers had arrived on site. The authorities have also attracted a large capacity suspension pump, cranes and more than 30 tonnes of gravel.
The Polish armed forces focused on a military engineering unit to help take over. Its 150 staff members, the water pump and its recovery vehicles followed were on its way to the site on Friday, as was a diving team of the labor force of Commander 68, whose headquarters in Rota, Spain. The crew had to join the recovery efforts in the next 24 hours.
Before being missing, the soldiers, all part of the 1st brigade, 3rd infantry division, had carried out an interview mission to recover another army vehicle. The initial research included military helicopters, Lithuanian diving teams and hundreds of us and Lithuanian soldiers and officers responsible for the application of laws that looked through thick forests and marshy land.
Since Wednesday, the staff focused on the area where their armored vehicle was found. As much as it was, they worked to drain the water and flirt with the mud of the site to better stabilize the soil, said the army.
The service retained the fate of the four soldiers, and their names had not yet been published on Friday. The army said it was holding the families of soldiers to the situation.
Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda and Kara C. McDonald, the American ambassador to Lithuania, joined Taylor on the site on Friday to “better understand the complexity of the operation,” said an army statement.
“We are absolutely determined to bring our soldiers back to home,” Taylor said in the press release. “I remain incredibly impressed by discipline, commitment and camaraderie in this unit as they try to recover their missing comrades.”
Nikki Wentling is editor -in -chief of Military Times. She has reportedly reported on veterans and military communities for almost a decade and has also covered technology, politics, health care and crime. His work obtained several honors from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, the Arkansas Associated Press managing publishers and others.
