US Army Practices Mass Burials After Decades Amid Looming Iran War Threat

The US Army is reportedly training its troops to dig mass graves to bury fellow soldiers killed in battle in preparation for the possibility of large-scale casualties in a future conflict. The US Army hasn't needed the exercise since the 1950-53 Korean War, when nearly 37,000 US personnel were killed. 

The training comes at a time when Washington is reportedly planning a massive operation in Iran. According to a report by Newsweek magazine, the military training was undertaken as a rehearsal of how the US troops would respond if a high number of casualties were sustained while fighting a still-blazing war.

The US Army, in a release, said that soldiers with the 3rd Corps Sustainment Command and the 20th Engineer Brigade, based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, as well as religious support personnel like military chaplains, took part in the drill. They used diggers and excavators to see how effectively they could be used to help preserve bodies intact until they could be identified and repatriated to the US.

In the recent military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than excavating large temporary graves, the US military has undertaken the practice of quickly evacuating dead soldiers back to the US. 

"Beyond sheer speed, a primary objective of the exercise was to verify that these temporary interment methods successfully preserve remains in an intact state, ensuring that subsequent forensic and anthropological teams can safely disinter, identify, and ultimately repatriate every fallen soldier once hostilities cease," the release added.

According to US military rules, troops at all levels are responsible for caring for the remains of dead personnel and making sure they can be identified further down the line.

"This exercise allowed us to take a critical look at how we respect, honour, and systematically manage our fallen in a high-intensity conflict," Sergeant 1st Class Delbert Ruede, from the 3rd Corps Sustainment Command, said in a statement.

"If we went to war tomorrow, we would be making this up as we went along. What we are doing here is taking a scientific, field-tested approach so that we can maintain positive control and respectfully care for our fallen."

The Fort Bragg exercises were the first time in more than 20 years that Army chaplains and religious affairs personnel trained on religious support for temporary battlefield interment.