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The U.S. Army is rehearsing how to bury fallen soldiers in temporary mass graves, a practice it hasn’t used on a large scale since the Korean War. After a recent drill, the Army said one engineer company working nonstop could dig and cover graves for up to 2,400 bodies in 24 hours.
The exercise, called Phase II of Operation Dragon Covenant, took place earlier this month in the Fayetteville, North Carolina, area. Combat engineers, chaplains, preventive medicine teams and fatality management specialists took part, according to an Army release.
The goal is to keep remains intact so forensic teams can recover and identify them after the fighting ends and return them to their families. To test this, engineers dug and refilled trenches holding mock remains made from skeletal models and water containers.
How would the US Army bury 2,400 fallen soldiers in 24 hours?
Under Army doctrine, a temporary burial plot has five parallel trenches with room for 100 bodies, 10 along each side of a trench. In earlier trials, crews using standard backhoes needed about three hours to finish a single trench.
For this drill, crews switched to D6 bulldozers, which are heavy tracked earthmovers. The faster pace is what led the Army to its estimate of 2,400 burials a day.
The exercise also exposed a flaw in the Army’s own guidance. Doctrine calls for 7 feet between rows, but crews found that too narrow to drive a bulldozer through without disturbing the graves. The Army said the rules will be updated.
“If we went to war tomorrow, we would be making this up as we went along,” Sgt. 1st Class Delbert Ruede, the senior fatality management leader for the 3rd Corps Sustainment Command, said in the release.
How did the US Army bury its fallen in the Korean War?
During the Korean War, Army graves registration units were responsible for recovering and identifying troops killed in action, according to National Archives records. That included Americans and other forces in the United Nations Command, the U.S.-led coalition that fought in Korea.
The units worked out of Korea and Japan. They transported remains and ran military cemeteries in Korea, including a United Nations cemetery at Tanggok, near the southern port city of Busan.
Not all remains were found. The Army kept rosters of service members whose bodies were never recovered. In 1958, an unidentified Korean War soldier was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
By the time the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, 33,741 U.S. service members had been killed in combat. Another 2,827 had died from other causes, according to the National Archives.
Why is the US Army preparing for temporary mass burials now?
For two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. control of the skies meant remains could be flown home quickly. The Army says that may not be possible in large-scale combat operations, its term for a major war against a well-equipped enemy.
U.S. policy is to evacuate remains whenever operations allow. Joint military guidance permits temporary graves only in mass casualty events: when bodies can’t be moved safely, when transport isn’t available, or when deaths are caused by chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons.
Those graves can hold U.S. troops, civilians or enemy fighters, and all must be treated with dignity. Because crews can’t pause round-the-clock burials for individual services, chaplains plan to consecrate each site before any remains are placed there.
The Army’s next phase of the exercise, set for spring 2027, will add security, medical facilities and a collection point for remains.