OVERLOOKED PEOPLE WHO DESERVE TO BE REMEMBERED

No Man Left Behind: Capt. Lawrence E. Dickson

On December 23, 1944, Tuskegee airman Capt. Lawrence E. Dickson went down in his P-51 Mustang in the vicinity of the Italian-Austrian border. A seasoned pilot, he was on his 68th mission and had received the Distinguished Flying Cross just months earlier, but an engine failure sealed his fate. The 24-year-old officer left behind a widow, daughter, mother, and two brothers.

Attempts were made to find him for several years after the war ended, but while other crash sites in the vicinity were located, his wasn’t.

DPAA

We’re all familiar with the military doctrine of “no man left behind,” but many don’t realize it has no expiration date. The hardworking people of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) are dedicated to finding and identifying the more than 82,000 service members who remain missing long after the battlefields have gone quiet. While the bulk of its effort is focused on World War II and Korea, the mission covers more recent (e.g., Vietnam), more distant (e.g., WWI), and non-combat (e.g., Cold War) conflicts.

To accomplish this, DPAA employs a multidisciplinary team of experts skilled in “foreign government negotiation, formulation of national policy, remains recovery and identification, DNA science, archival research and intelligence analysis.” Genealogists are also a piece of this puzzle, as are a growing number of specialized third party institutions.

Fast forward seven decades from the time of Capt. Dickson’s loss. Joshua Frank, a DPAA research analyst, cross-pollinated American and German reports. While Capt. Dickson was believed to have crashed in Italy, Frank found a German record for a downed P-51 six miles away in Austria, and sent local investigator Roland Domanig to take a closer look. Domanig already knew the site, recalling it from his childhood.

In the summer of 2017, a team composed of DPAA personnel and professors and students from the University of New Orleans and the University of Innsbruck excavated the site. These two universities have a well-established relationship geared toward providing…