The sad task of wandering about the war-torn countryside of Europe in search of fallen World War I American aviators fell to a U.S. Army captain named E.W. Zinn. A combat pilot himself, Zinn had roamed France, Belgium and Germany interviewing the local population to see what they knew of American crash sites:
"Captain Zinn has found that in a great many cases American fliers were buried either by the Germans or by civilians with no mark of identification left on them."
Click here to read some statistical data about the American Doughboys of the First World War.