Where They Lay

The US government has an unspoken pledge with every man and woman it sends into battle: you may be wounded doing your duty, you may even be killed, but you'll come home. You won't be left behind...

On 20 March 1971, during the largest helicopter battle in history, an American chopper exploded in the skies over Laos. Its scorched remains fell onto terrain about which the allied forces knew little except that it was hostile, so dense with North Vietnamese that going in search of the downed crew was out of the question. And so they were left where they lay - four among the 2,583 servicemen whose bodies remained unrecovered at the war's end.

Thirty years on and a team of soldiers and scientists is returning to that battlefield. Their mission - one of dozens conducted every year - is to dig among the unexploded bombs, in ground slick from monsoon rains, in jungle infested with foot-long centipedes, leeches and snakes, to find these lost men, to bring them home and to put a name - the right name - on each headstone.

Telling the enthralling and little-known story of these recovery teams and their elusive employer: the US Army's Central Identification Laboratory - the world's largest forensic science lab - Where They Lay is a classic of modern warfare and its aftermath.