Sometimes a service member’s family has to wait through painful decades before they can finally lay their loved one to rest with the military honors they deserve. The sad reality is that when servicemen and women are involved in conflicts overseas and are killed or reported missing in action, there can be times when their remains cannot be accounted for and it can take years for their remains to even be located. Even after the remains are found, it can still take additional time to be able to identify the remains; sadly, sometimes identification is still not yet possible with our current knowledge. Through the painful of years waiting to find their service members’ remains, some families have held out hope that their loved ones could still be alive. At the end of World War Two there were about 79,000 American servicemen unaccounted for; today only 7,000 have been accounted for. At the end of the Vietnam War there was over 2,500 servicemen unaccounted for and today only 1,000 Americans killed in the war have been identified and returned to their families. In modern times DNA has improved and has given the U.S. the ability identify remains faster. However, without a relative present to provide a DNA comparison, it can be almost impossible to ever put a name with the found remains of America’s heroes. Here are the stories of servicemen whose remains took decades to be returned to their loved ones and finally laid to rest.

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