Prior to 2003, the United States military would conduct a basic autopsy on a dead soldier.
An autopsy is a forensic examination of a dead body conducted to determine why or how a forensic examination of a dead .
The family of each soldier wants to know how their son or daughter died while fighting for their country.
This involved cutting open a deceased soldier's body and looking for bullet fragments,shrapnel from land mines or other injuries.
since there are so many ways to die, it often take many hours for a coroner to discover the cause of death.
Autopsies are necessary in potential murder cases.
But in the military , the cause of death is almost always due to enemy fire.