- [Soldier] Everybody in the military,
you know, we fight the nation's battles.
That's what we do.
And I know if I got killed in battle somewhere,
I would want my remains brought home,
you know, to my mom, dad, family, wife.
And I know they want the same.
(wind blowing)
- [Narrator] On a barge, somewhere in the South China Sea.
A team of deep sea diving soldiers,
are searching for something.
- So Army divers, we're more of
a Jack of all trades as far as metal tasks.
We do underwater welding, cutting, interlock tools,
surveys, port clearance, ships husbandry.
- [Narrator] But here in Vietnam,
army divers are conducting a more unique mission.
- [Les] So, we go to different sights around the world
and look for POW and MIA personnel from all the
conflicts that the US have been in.
- [Diver] Check red.
- [Diver] Check green.
- [Diver] Check standby.
- We are looking for a helicopter that has known losses.
So, our job as as the dive team is to moor a barge
over the crash sight, and then we do an archeological
excavation dig of the crash site looking for
any material evidence or osseous material
that can correlate to the known losses.
(splashing)
- [Narrator] The Defense POW MIA Accounting Agency,
an organization dedicated to bringing back
America's missing in action, enlists the help
of the Seventh Engineer Dive Detachment,
who's conducting most of the diving.
Through extensive historical research and investigation
the DPAA identifies sites around the world where they think
they'll find the remains of US service members.
These missions are conducted on land as well as at sea.
- [Diver] We do exactly what the land team does,
we dig a hole in the earth, we put it in a bucket,
we screen it, same exact process that they do
except ours is at 80 feet and we can't see it.
- [Diver] I think the analogy is,
vacuuming your neighbor's house,
for the first time, in the dark.
- On standby.
(splashing)
- Specifically at this site, it's about
three or four feet of silt.
So, I don't know if anybody has gone through a swamp,
but I went to one with my wife and she got out of the kayak
and put her foot down in it, went all the way to her hips.
That's about like what it is except
you can't see in front of your face.
- [Narrator] And they don't have
a lot of time to do it either.
- Last DPAA mission, we had six hours of bottom time.
So, we had six hours to do whatever we could
for each diver, one diver, now we have to split
that six hours up into 55 minutes for each diver.
But we do like four or five dives a day for 55 minutes each,
we're not even touching six hours.
As divers we gotta be worried about a lot of stuff
down there, but you get to work, you know.
There's, we have no time.
You get down, get to your basket,
get to your dredge, go to work.
- [Narrator] Probably the most dangerous challenge
however, are the risks of diving at this depth
for this period of time.
- The deeper you go, the more decompression
you're gonna owe.
That's why you see us, you know, rushing up
and they rushing the guys up, sitting them down,
and having them put them in the chamber.
- [Narrator] To make the most of their limited time
they use a decompression chamber to ensure
the divers don't suffer from decompression sickness.
- Your body builds up nitrogen in it's system,
so then you breathe it out naturally.
But when you're underwater and it's pressurized
it doesn't come out fast enough through natural respiration
so you have to make what are called decompression stops
at certain depths, so you can safely breathe off
the amount of nitrogen to make it safe to come out.
(relaxing piano music)
- [Narrator] Despite the complexity of the work
the team never loses sight of why they're there.
- If you were lost for 75 years
and your family didn't have closure
that'd be a big deal for a lot of people.
It takes you to a more emotional point in your life
where you think about how you can help those people.
And for us specifically, it's in the water.
So, if we can get down to a dive site, get on bottom,
and search for these guys until we find them,
that's what we're gonna do.
And we're all extremely glad that we can get
the opportunity to do that.
(relaxing piano music)