An intriguing entry in MERX for “Mortuary Services” drew my eye.
I leave it to the Statement of Work (.pdf) to explain (highlights mine):
“….Of the approximately 112,000 Canadian servicemen and women who died in the First World, Second World and Korean wars, nearly 28,000 have no known grave. Agricultural practices, combined with new road, business and housing construction on the former battlefields of Europe and Asia, has brought about an increase in the discovery of unidentified human remains; including the remains of Canadian servicemen. Although it is not Canada’s practice to seek missing service personnel from past wars, it is its practice to identify and formally inter those remains once they are discovered.
While in the past, Canadian remains were regularly found and housed at the nearest Commonwealth War Grave facility, the remains were rarely identified beyond that of unit-level and were thus interred as an unknown Canadian. The rapid improvement of genetic and other analytical techniques, together with an equally rapid drop in the cost for this type of testing has allowed Canada to apply greater precision in identifying the remains of fallen servicemen and women…”
In light of this, DND is looking for “a mortuary service provider …. to recover and transfer full or partial human remains of formerly missing Canadian servicemen from one country to another,” including the services of “Forensic Archeological, Forensic Anthropological, (and) Genealogy specialists.”
If all goes according to plan, the contract would run from signing until the end of March 2013, with options to further extend the contract for four additional one-year terms.
The bottom line:
“To recover and identify the remains of fallen Canadian soldiers, deceased prior to 1970, in order to provide the soldiers and their families with a notable internment.”
Good show
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