ORLANDO, Fla. – John Marsack isn’t in the military anymore, but this U.S. Navy veteran continues to serve his country in a heroic way.
Marsack, spent 23 years in the Navy – 17 as a Navy diver – before retiring in 2017.
As a Navy diver, Marsack traveled the world repairing ships – or ships husbandry – and performing salvage missions.
“It’s an inherently dangerous profession but after you’ve been training and doing it do so long, it becomes second nature,” Marsack said.
A NEW MISSION
After retiring from the military, Marsack felt like something was missing. His friend Nick Zaborski, also a retired Navy diver, felt the same way.
“When you come from a special operations background and you’re used to doing the missions and the work that we did, it’s really hard to come home and just get in your boat everyday and go fishing or do whatever retired people do,” Marsack said. “After a while, we both got that itch.”
Marsack said they lost their mission in retirement.
“For a lot of veterans, that’s a huge problem,” Marsack said.
So, the pair started a commercial dive company. Marsack is currently the co-founder and managing partner of Legion Undersea Services with his business partner Zaborski.
Now, in partnership with Project Recover – formerly known as the The Bent Prop Project – his team has a new mission: To search the world’s waters in in order to bring those home who were missing or killed in action in all wars and conflicts dating back to WWII. Project Recover was originally called The Bent Prop Project.
The two organizations recover the remains on behalf of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
According to Marsack, the DPAA first has to determine if there is a high chance of recovering remains or if there may be any remains at a site. Once they determine there is a chance to recover, the information gets put into a mission and they contact Legion Undersea Services and Project Recover.
Next, a robust and complex planning process begins figuring out the logistics of the mission which includes moving 20-foot shipping containers full of dive gear and archaeological equipment. There is also the issue of permitting and permissions from whatever country they are working together with.
Marsack said the mission is run similar to how things are done in the military – 100% of the team at Legion Undersea Services are veterans, a majority being former Navy divers.
Once in the water, the salvage process is very structured, according to Marsack. They set up an archaeological grid system that is supervised by Project Recover archaeologists. They excavate in that grid until they get down to a sterile level, meaning they have are not not finding anymore remains or aircraft parts.
Once the remains are salvaged, the DPAA then processes and identifies the remains through DNA testing at their processing lab at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii with the goal of positively identifying the veteran and returning the remains to the family members.
While Legion Undersea Services does have other missions, the majority of their work if focused on recovery efforts with Project Recover, Marsack said.
So far, Legion Undersea Services has been able to positively identify two men from their recovery missions, with the number possibly being around eight. More remains have been recovered, but the process to identify can be a slow and arduous, sometimes taking a year or two.
“This past September, after out mission in Kwajalein, we actually got invited to the funeral of Wilbur Mitts, who was one of the two men that we have positively identified.”
Mitts was part of a three-member crew of a TBF Avenger airplane that crashed in the waters during WWII. The plane was last seen spinning violently before crashing into the water a few hundred feet from Malakal Island in Palau, according to the DPAA. All three crew members were killed.
At that funeral, Marsack had the honor of presenting the American flag to Mitts’ oldest living relative, his niece, who was born just three days after he died.
“We promised one another that we would never leave someone behind and that is the reason that we continue to do what we do,” Marsack said. “They paved the way for me to be a Navy diver. They paved the way for America to be America. They guaranteed that with their lives. Being able to go back and bring those men home – I don’t think that there is anything better that I could do with the skills that I learned in the military.”
There are still more than 80,000 POW/MIAs unaccounted for.
Marsack still has that desire to serve – he is on the Central Florida Navy League’s board of directors, acts as the race director for the annual Wounded Warfighter Lone Sailor 5K/10K race, volunteers as a member of Team Rubicon and belongs to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, The American Legion.
“Anyone who is patriotic and loves America, or maybe have had a family member that never returned home from war, I urge you to go to the Project Recover website,” Marsack said. “And if you can, if you’re fortunate enough to have the means to donate to the cause to bring to Americans home, it would be wonderful.”
Photos courtesy of Chris Perez, Legion Undersea Services