Experts with the United States military expend enormous resources to search for the bodies of missing soldiers. A team is currently at work in the northern Eifel Mountains region of western Germany, where tens of thousands of Americans died during World War II.

"We can make French fries for lunch out of those," jokes archeologist Denise To, pointing to three rows of potato plants on the edge of a field. The leaves have shriveled and turned brown, and a few potatoes sticking out of the ground have already turned green -- high time for the potato harvest.

Nearby, in a field of wheat stubble, the driver of a small excavator is carefully digging a trench into the soil. It looks like a miniature version of a much larger machine visible in the distance as it eats its way through brown coal. The field, which borders the northern Eifel Mountains in western Germany, is where To and her team work. They believe that it harbors the gravesite of an American who crash-landed his burning P-38"Lightning" during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest.