Lt. William Alfred Bujold, of Rumford, will be interred in his hometown Friday, more than 64 years after his bomber was shot down during a nighttime run over Papua, New Guinea, during World War II.

It seems like mad science, for one lost soldier from a conflict that killed millions to be coming home after all these decades. Such are the advancements in DNA identification, and the unquenched thirst for answers from the missing-in-action’s families and their latter-day comrades in the armed forces.

Thousands of soldiers are still unaccounted: some 78,000 from World War II (though only 35,000 are believed recoverable), 8,100 from Korea, 1,800 from Vietnam, 126 from the Cold War, and one from the first Persian Gulf war, according the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, which oversees recovery efforts.

“Uncle Al,” as his living relatives remember Bujold, is one of thousands more American soldiers to have their remains repatriated from forensic investigation and DNA analyses. The most notable case occurred in 1998, when scientists gave the iconic unknown soldier of Arlington National Cemetery a name: Lt. Michael Blassie, an Air Force pilot from St. Louis, Mo., who died in May 1972.

JPAC averages two missing soldier identifications per week, an astounding figure given the complexity of the forensics involved. Recovering the remains, however, is only half the task; matching the DNA from the missing-in-action is the other crucial link, and the one most easily broken.

Agencies like JPAC chronically call for relatives – usually on the mother’s side, for analysis purposes – of missing servicemen and servicewomen to donate a DNA sample, in hopes of matching its unique sequence to remains uncovered overseas. Without one, identification is near impossible.

Two locals, U.S. Navy sailor Neil Brooks Taylor of Rangeley (born July 18, 1940) and Air Force pilot William Stephen Sanders of Winthrop (born April 17, 1943), have requests for family DNA donation marked as “Urgent” by JPAC, which means the agency has found remains that could be these missing men.

And although Sanders and Taylor are on the cusp of identification, other missing soldiers – like John Brooks of Bryant Pond, Carl Churchill of Bethel, Robert Graustein of Fryeburg and Peter Vlahakos of Auburn – remain missing and could be next, according to JPAC records.

For more information on identifying missing soldiers, visit JPAC’s Web site at www.jpac.pacom.mil.

With modern forensics, the military believes all remains recovered from wars past and present will be reunited with their families. The amazing story of Lt. Bujold shows this optimism is well-founded.

Relatives of the missing should be encouraged to submit DNA samples, in the remote chance their matches are found. The phrase “everyone comes home” from wartime isn’t a hollow statement.

The military and modern science is working hard to keep this promise, no matter how long it takes.