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But the mission took on new meaning on July 30, about a week into the work.

That’s when the federal , or DPAA, announced it had positively identified a member of the bomber’s crew from remains previously recovered during the excavation.

For the surviving family members of 22-year-old , the confirmation finally provided closure after more than 80 years.

“To see that actually happen while we were there was super cool,� said Ellwanger, who is also 22.

The future Army officer spent the past month working at the dig site in a wheat field near the Czech border, alongside his brother and fellow ROTC Cadet Zach Ellwanger, Cadet Carson Criswell and U of A anthropology student Max von Husen.

The trip was arranged by the DPAA’s Tucson-based chief of innovation Jesse Stephen and U of A Army ROTC commander Lt. Col. Rich Ingleby.

“It was a lot of hard physical labor, six days a week for a month,� said Ingleby, who went along on the recovery mission and is now looking to dramatically expand the university partnership with the accounting agency. “It was not easy, but it was an awesome thing to be a part of.�

The Tucson contingent was part of a 20-person team led by , a California-based firm that’s been digging at the crash site since 2019 and has with about a dozen other recovery operations in Poland and Germany.

The team also included several local residents with expertise in Polish history and archaeology.

“The entire crew there were civilian volunteers. I was the only one with a military ID card on site,� Ingleby said. “It was pretty touching and pretty powerful seeing that.�

Buried in clay

Ingleby and the students spent most of their time lugging wet dirt in heavy buckets and sifting it through mesh screens to catch any pieces of airplane wreckage or other debris.

It was rainy at times, hot at others, but von Husen said the biggest challenge was “the soil itself.� “It was 100% clay that you had to physically force through the screens,� the 20-year-old anthropology major said.

Though the work was hard and “monotonous at times,� von Husen said he thoroughly enjoyed it. He returned from Poland more convinced than ever that he wants to find a job involving fieldwork after he graduates in the spring.

Much of the debris the recovery team found was no bigger than a quarter — fragments of Bakelite plastic and aluminum, some of it with rivet holes in it. They also turned up 50-caliber bullets from the bomber’s anti-aircraft guns, the data plate from its Norden bombsight, a small patch of parachute fabric and a silver lieutenant’s bar that must have been worn by one of the officers on the aircraft.

Then there were the artifacts unrelated to the crash, including ceramic shards and a rare Roman coin that could date back to the second century.

“We were finding stuff a good amount of the time,� Ellwanger said. “There were a couple instances where we found actual things we could send back to get DNA tested, which is pretty neat.�

Specifically, von Husen said, they collected teeth and bone fragments that might have come from members of the bomber’s crew.

“It was a successful mission,� he said.

According to Ingleby, the recovery team had hoped to finish its excavations and “close out� the site this summer, but another piece of possible human remains was discovered on the second-to-last day of the scheduled fieldwork. “There’s more work to be done, clearly,� he said.

Von Husen thinks it could take one or even two more field seasons to fully excavate the area. “They can’t close the site until they’re no longer finding things,� he said.

The DPAA’s Stephen confirmed that “possible evidentiary materials� were recovered during the recent dig, but he declined to elaborate.

He said the materials were in the process of being transferred out of Poland to a U.S. military installation in Germany and then on to the agency’s forensic lab at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska.

Lost and found

By coincidence, Omaha is also where Robert Keuchel grew up and went to school before he joined the military.

He was serving as a right waist gunner with the 15th Air Force’s Italy-based 429th Bombardment Squadron, when was shot down during a bombing raid on a German oil refinery on March 22, 1945.

The pilot and co-pilot bailed out and were captured. The rest of the 10-man crew was killed.

So far, only two of those men have been accounted for: Keuchel and the bomber’s navigator, 20-year-old of Yonkers, New York.

The DPAA identified Betchley in 2017, after conducting a new forensic analysis on remains that were initially buried in a cemetery near the village of Glinica in southwestern Poland.

“We visited that cemetery,� von Husen said. “It was a very powerful experience.�

Inside the church there, the U of A students saw the broken piece of propeller that hangs on the wall, decorated with red fabric poppies and a statue of Jesus as a memorial to the bomber’s crew. A sign next to the propeller lists the men’s names and what happened to them in Polish and English.

“In memory of the American flyers, fighting and falling in this area (on) March 22, 1945,� the sign says. “Their names and sacrifice will never be forgotten. Rest in peace and glory.�

Visiting the memorial and digging through the clay in search of the missing men really hit home for Ellwanger, who plans to graduate from the U of A in the spring and begin his Army career the next day as a second lieutenant, preferably in an infantry unit.

He said the experience made him think about his grandfather, who served as a door gunner in Vietnam and came home with a Purple Heart after his helicopter was shot down.

Ellwanger said it was nice to know that if his grandpa hadn’t made it back from the war, someone would still be out there looking for him.

“It was amazing,� he said. “To see other people there volunteering their time to look for these soldiers to give the families closure was really amazing.�

Force multipliers

The U of A team has only been home since Aug. 20, and Ingleby and Stephen are already planning next year’s trip.

They have their sights set on a DPAA site in Sicily, not far from where the university regularly sends anthropology students to conduct fieldwork as part of of the western part of the island. The idea is to have some of those students stay for a few additional weeks to assist with a recovery mission before they head home, Ingleby said.

Meanwhile, he and Stephen are working to forge a long-term, national partnership between the DPAA and the Army ROTC that would provide volunteer opportunities to cadets at universities across the country. Eventually, Ingleby wants to see Navy and Air Force ROTC programs brought into the fold as well.

And their plans don’t stop there.

Ingleby and Stephen also hope to launch what they’re calling the ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥ Center for the Missing in Action to assist DPAA’s ongoing, global effort to recover lost servicemembers while providing meaningful volunteer and educational opportunities to university students.

The center would be based at the U of A, but its work would be paid for through donations, grants and sponsorships. Its primary focus would be on the 387 servicemembers from ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥ who remain unaccounted for.

Ingleby said the idea has already been well received within the School of Anthropology, and he hopes to involve other schools and departments as well.

“The end goal is to send U of A students on a fully funded DPAA mission somewhere around the world every year,� he said. “The pieces are falling into place quickly.�

The DPAA and its partners recover and identify around 200 individuals each year, but from conflicts dating back to the start of World War II. Ingleby said students from the U of A and ROTC cadets from across the country could help bring that total down by providing hundreds or even thousands of volunteer hours to the effort.

“We’re excited for the potential that this could bring,� he said. “That’s how we get these guys home.�