Operation Nobility: The Identification of a Missing Soldier from the Battle of Arnhem, 1944

Abstract

The Recovery and Identification Unit of the Royal Netherlands Army (RIU) was established in January 1945 under the Dutch Free Forces of the Interior, in the liberated south of the Netherlands. On behalf of the Netherlands Ministry of Defence, RIU (part of the Royal Logistic Corps) is responsible for location, exhumation and identification of missing World War II victims, both civilian and military, regardless of their background or nationality. Its main objective is to help next of kin achieve closure and ensure a reinterment in a marked grave, in accordance with national and international conventions, regulations and legislation. The Netherlands government continues to consider this a moral obligation, a duty of care and a debt of honour. The work of the unit combines the fields of forensic and conflict archaeology, physical anthropology (i.e. osteology and odontology) and military history. Basically RIU matches biological profiles to medical profiles and historical profiles. The unit is based at the Dumoulin barracks at Soesterberg, the Netherlands, where it works from a human osteology laboratory. The purpose and intent of this investigation was to identify the skeletal remains of a supposedly World War II British soldier, found on 6 February 2013 in south Arnhem, the Netherlands. The answers were obtained through the following types of research: forensic archaeology, human osteology, human odontology, study of the recovered artefacts, desktop research, genealogy and DNA analyses.