The body of a fourth U.S. Army soldier was found on Tuesday in Lithuania, a week after the soldier and three others were reported missing when the armored vehicle they were riding in sank in a bog, the U.S. military said.
The Army did not immediately release the name of the fourth soldier, whose body was found a day after the three other soldiers were found dead following an extensive international search effort that has involved hundreds of personnel from Lithuania, the United States, Poland and Estonia.
The four U.S. soldiers, from the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, were reported missing early on March 25, when they did not return from a training mission in an M88A2 Hercules, a 70-ton vehicle that is essentially a giant military tow truck.
They had been sent out to extract another Army vehicle, the military said. But the soldiers may have driven off the road and into a deep bog, and they appeared to have been trapped inside as the vehicle sank, according to an Army official in Europe. The U.S. Army is investigating the cause of the accident.
Rescue workers located the vehicle on March 26, but extracting it from the mud proved to be a daunting engineering challenge. Heavy equipment was brought in to dredge the bog, and divers, dogs, and drones — including one equipped with ground-penetrating radar — were deployed in the recovery effort.
The U.S. Army did not say where the body of the fourth soldier had been found. The soldiers had been training near Pabrade, a city in eastern Lithuania near the border with Belarus.
“I can’t say enough about the support our Lithuanian allies have provided us,” Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, said in a statement. “We have leaned on them, and they, alongside our Polish and Estonian allies — and our own sailors, airmen and experts from the Corps of Engineers — have enabled us to find and bring home our soldiers.”
Lithuanian leaders have pointed to the international recovery effort to underscore the value of NATO allies working together amid rising alarm in Lithuania and other Baltic countries that President Trump will weaken the NATO alliance.
On Tuesday, President Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuania, who had visited the site of the accident, said the country’s “heartfelt condolences go to our U.S. allies and their people.”
“Lithuania has been praying for all four missing soldiers, and now, with all our hearts, we stand with their families,” he said on social media. “We are deeply grateful to everyone who dedicated immense efforts to find the one remaining soldier still missing under such challenging conditions.”