COM Outlook Spring 2020

NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY | 29 STUDENT Perspectives An experience I’ll never forget happened on my very first soldier repatriation to Palau. We were recovering a pilot whose plane was shot down over the Pacific Ocean during World War II (WWII), and I oversaw evidence collection and turnover for the second part of the mission. We were wet screening the sediment that was dredged up from the ocean floor when a coworker handed me a round metal object and asked, “Is this the pilot’s watch?” It was corroded, and all that remained was the watch casing, but it was unmistakable. I can recover human skeletal remains and divorce myself from what they represent fairly easily, but the emotional connotation of something as intimate and important as a WWII pilot’s wristwatch is not easily ignored or forgotten. In fact, the American A-11, which was standard issue at the time, was nicknamed “the watch that won the war,” so that should give you an idea of just how important those watches were in keeping our boys safe during WWII. I think of that lieutenant often, and I always circle back to my memory of how I felt holding his watch in my hand. I think about all the emotions, both his and mine, that his watch represents. It still tears me apart to this day. Another emotional moment occurred when I was working on a Japanese WWII sailor repatriation on Guam. I was responsible for the skeletal analysis of several individuals from two mass graves, which had to be completed in about a week. Every time I read the age section of an individual’s biological profile, I was overcome with sadness. They all died between the ages of 18 to 25, which was the same age range I belonged to at the time. I remember thinking that we might have been friends in another life. Thoughts like that still haunt me. o HAUNTING INSIGHTS OF A FORENSIC ARCHAEOLOGIST The Watch that Won the War STUDENT PERSPECTIVES BY KELSEY REINSCH H H H H