KITTITAS COUNTY - Deep into the Cascades at the end of a forest service road high above Cle Elum, a group of military experts start their daily and grueling 2 hour climb on foot. On a tight military budget, it's the only way to reach what's left of a Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless dive bomber. On Feb. 15,1945 it carried Ensign Matthew McFarland and Lt. Jesse Battenfeld to their deaths as they vanished on a routine flight from Sand Point Naval Air Station. The wreckage was found 7-months later but 60 years later the wreckage and the remains of the two men are still there. So for the first time in Washington state, the same military teams that bring MIA remains home from Cambodia and Vietnam are in Cle Elum to bring these men home too. "My father was in the military for 23 years, in the Army, in the infantry," said William Belcher, PhD., the lead forensic anthropologist on this JPAC (Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command) Team. "It helps me sort of pay back the debt I have to him and his generation." "Because if it was me I would want somebody to do it for me," said Maj. Charles Gatling, the ground commander for this mission. "And so that's the torch I carry when I go up the hill. If I was up there I would want somebody to go up and get me."
