Soldiers share Arlington grave - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Soldiers share Arlington grave

Maria Duran said she could feel her son’s remains just by looking at the closed coffin in front of her.

She knew there were only a few pieces, but she wanted to see them anyway.

“I didn’t count them; they were all dried up,” Duran said quietly in a recent phone interview from her home town of Navarrete in the Dominican Republic, recalling the day in July 2008 when she received what was left of her son, Staff Sgt. Alex Jimenez.

Jimenez and Spc. Byron Fouty went missing May 12, 2007, southwest of Baghdad after an ambush attack in which five other soldiers with 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, were killed.

For 14 months, only small clues surfaced. Their identification cards were found more than 80 miles north of the ambush site, and a weapon belonging to Jimenez was found south of Baghdad.

It wasn’t until July 8, 2008, that the soldiers’ sun-baked bones were found in a shallow dirt grave not far from the site of the attack. Two weeks later, what could be identified through DNA testing was returned to the families for burial.

But there would be more to come. Because the remains of Jimenez and Fouty had been exposed to Iraq’s harsh elements for so long, there were pieces that could not be identified. Those remains were classified by the Army as “commingled,” by standard procedure, and placed in the custody of the secretary of the Army for disposition.

On Feb. 17, the families of Jimenez and Fouty gathered under a bright sun at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia to bury the commingled remains of their beloved sons — this time in a single coffin.

It is not the first time the Army has buried commingled remains since operations began in Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been eight such burials of soldiers. A ninth group burial was held for one soldier and four airmen who died Nov. 23, 2003, in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.

Jimenez was a 25-year-old specialist when he was captured; he was promoted to sergeant during his disappearance and ultimately was laid to rest as a staff sergeant at Flushing National Cemetery in New York. Fouty is buried in Texas at Sam Houston National Cemetery. He was 19 and fresh out of basic training when he vanished, having spent only three months with his unit.

The ordeal of getting her son back in stages, Duran said, “was like getting the pieces of an undone puzzle.”

“They told me that because of the time that went by they couldn’t identify all of him. But I’m really appreciative of all the work they did to get him back to us. A mother could never imagine something like this. I am just knocked down,” Duran said, breaking into sobs.

Six soldiers have been listed as missing or captured in the current conflicts, all of them in Iraq.

Only one of those soldiers, Spc. Ahmed K. Altaie, remains missing. He was abducted by masked gunmen in Baghdad on Oct. 23, 2006, when he left the fortified Green Zone to visit his Iraqi wife.

“We’ve accounted for everybody else and that’s unheard of,” said Navy Capt. Craig Mallak, the Defense Department’s chief medical examiner.

Mallak and his team of forensic anthropologists rely on more than 5.5 million DNA samples collected on cards from active duty and Reserve troops during basic training.

But identifying service members through DNA is not always possible, even with the significant advances made in recent years. Victims who die in a fiery crash, he said, are often charred beyond the reach of DNA testing, so they rely on dental records or fingerprints.

Tiny pieces, he said, can be completely consumed in DNA testing, so if it’s the only piece they have there would be nothing to return to the family. But they’ll test it if a service member is unaccounted for.

Mallak did not address the Jimenez-Fouty case specifically, but he explained the problems with remains that have been exposed to the elements for long periods of time.

“In Vietnam, it’s very warm and humid and there’s lots of bacteria, and that’s our challenge there. In Iraq, it’s very hot and dry and you don’t get the bacteria that breaks it down, but you’ve got the scorching heat that’s actually baking it,” he said. “There are some bones that are better for DNA than others.”

“Our standard is a full accounting. It’s a matter of honor, it’s a matter of taking care of the families that sent their loved ones off and they gave their life in service to the country,” he said. “They deserve a full accounting. It’s a sacred duty that we cannot fail.”

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• Recent joint burials