"Inside a two-story freezer in a nondescript Maryland warehouse are DNA samples from nearly every person who has served in the U.S. military since 1992 - 4 million men and women," the Associated Press reports.
The samples play a key role in one of the military's grimmest tasks: identifying the bodies of fallen soldiers...
The repository, overseen by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, was created after the first Gulf War. The military used DNA testing selectively during the war, but didn't decide until later to make it a routine part of the identification process.
Now, matching remains to DNA contained in smears of blood on index cards has become the military's gold standard for casualty identification.
