THE DEAD OF WINTER

How Battlefield Investigators, WWII Veterans, and Forensic Scientists Solved the Mystery of the Bulge's Lost Soldiers

Bill Warnock

Chamberlain Bros.

November 2005

Genre: Non-Fiction

Format: Hardcover

THE DEAD OF WINTER chronicles the passionate and tireless search for missing U.S. soldiers killed during the “Battle of the Bulge.” Forty-six years after that epic struggle, a group of Belgian and American volunteers joined forces to hunt for those lost servicemen and to recover their remains. The ensuing decade brought disappointment and untold frustration, yet perseverance eventually paid off. The search team found the forgotten graves of eight missing GIs. All were exhumed, positively identified, and subsequently laid to rest by their loved ones. That achievement resulted from painstaking investigative work and a steadfast belief that all of America’s war dead should be accounted for. The tireless work of the search team will form the narrative thread that holds the story together. Readers will come to know the Belgians as they evolve from battlefield-relic hunters to search-and-recovery specialists.

While spotlighting the search team, the narrative will recount the lives of the eight young soldiers and how they came to their tragic fate. The families of these men are also integral to the story. During and after the war, they grieved but had no remains to bury and scant answers to their questions. This awful ambiguity finally ended a half-century later.

THE DEAD OF WINTER pays tribute to the WWII veterans who joined the search team. These men were wartime buddies of the missing soldiers. Without the veterans and their research work, the remains of their fallen comrades would still be missing and their stories lost to history.

—Amy Waters Yarsinske, author of No One Left Behind:  The Lt. Comdr. Michael Scott Speicher Story