Overview
- Twenty-five Americans killed on Omaha Beach were buried with full honors at Omaha National Cemetery on Thursday.
- The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency transferred the remains from the Normandy American Cemetery to its Offutt Air Force Base lab in 2021 for analysis.
- Supervisory forensic anthropologist Carrie Brown and her team have identified six of the men, with 18 still awaiting names.
- DNA testing was challenging because many remains were burned or chemically treated in the 1940s, and only 188 bones were recovered across all 25 servicemen.
- The men had rested for decades under four graves marked for unknowns in Normandy, and about 50 relatives traveled to Omaha as DPAA continues efforts to identify the rest.