As we observe Memorial Day 2026, strident efforts continue to identify our military members missing in action from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and Southwest Asia. Yet, no one is officially able to recover the over 4,400 American “Doughboys” missing in action from World War I.
In its time, World War I was earth-shattering for the stillyoung American nation, the very first time America became involved in a European war, far from American shores. As the first war of the industrial age, powerful new artillery, machine guns, poison gas, flame throwers, and military aircraft were all new, gruesome ways for soldiers to be wounded and killed. Unfortunately, the horrors of that war were soon eclipsed by the devastating Great Depression of the 1930s and the even greater horrors of World War II 20 years later.
Over four million Americans served during World War I, and more Americans lost their lives in the short Meuse-Argonne Offensive in late 1918 than in any battle in any of our wars outside of the Civil War. In total, over 53,000 Americans died in combat during a short six months of actual fighting.
When World War I ended, our government took unprecedented action to reunite American families with the identified remains of their loved ones killed during the war. Families could elect to have remains returned to the U.S. or interred in breathtakingly beautiful battlefield cemeteries in France. When Gold Star mothers and widows chose to have a slain son or husband buried in France, our government organized paid “pilgrimages” to see their graves. The effort to recover hastily interred soldiers and find, identify, and properly bury others from the fresh battlefields was monumental. Efforts continued until 1934, but due to the limitations of the science of the day and the Depression, recovery and identification of remains came to a halt. To be fair, those involved at the time had probably exhausted every means possible to complete a full accounting.
Currently, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, along with private groups, is stridently working to recover remains, literally across the world, from all our wars after World War I. One private sanctioned organization, Project Recover, uses highly skilled volunteer divers to find, identify, and recover remains from downed World War II U.S. military aircraft across the Pacific Ocean. However, with continuing advances in DNA science and extensive research conducted by the organization Doughboy MIA, it is estimated that about 1,000 of our World War I missing can be identified in the near term, their families notified, and they can finally rest in graves bearing their name. This happens frequently with World War I missing from British and Commonwealth countries, France, and Belgium.
Without formal U.S. government support through the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, organizations like Doughboy MIA are limited to what they can do to recover and identify these fallen American service members. With recovery teams already in place, a quick vote by Congress can start bringing home our long-missing Doughboys from the Great War, World War I.
Terry Lloyd, a U.S. Air Force veteran, covers veteran’s affairs along with transportation issues for the News-Gazette.
