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CHAPTER 1
BODIES OF THE DEAD
Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.
— John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 1961
Between 1944 and 1949, approximately 150,000 bodies of American soldiers killed during World War II were interred in temporary cemeteries all over western Europe. Of this number, a little more than 80,000 Americans were buried in French territory (see fig. 2). The numerous graves were so widespread that French farmers often were unable to plow their lands or to reclaim their much needed agricultural and industrial enterprises. Amassing the bodies and providing proper burial care and identification demanded an enormous effort by the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS), a branch of the United States Army. Following the example of World War I, the United States government had promised to repatriate the dead, if requested by the families of the fallen. As its complicated history reveals, American repatriation after both world wars was accomplished against all odds. Its debates reveal how both heartfelt care and political influence figured in the act of mourning war dead.
The process of returning the dead of World War II was modeled after that of World War I; one cannot tell of the history of the latter war without also looking at the example of the former. Historian Lisa M. Budreau has described the difficulties involved in the repatriation of soldiers during and after the first great world conflict. She outlines how the demands of grieving American families were in opposition to reasonable burial practice. Despite this, the American government went to great lengths to ensure a democratic process and to honor the wishes of its constituents. The United States was the only nation to repatriate the bodies of the fallen during and after the world wars. This is in part because it was the only nation wealthy enough to afford such an endeavor, but also because, for mourning, the people of the United States needed to witness their loved ones buried close to home. To that effect, historian Michael Sledge describes repatriation of the dead as a peculiarly American practice, asserting, "other cultures make do with much less physical proof."
After World War I the American Graves Registration Service initiated the long process of repatriation. By 1918, the AGRS had assumed responsibility for identifying, exhuming, and registering 79,351 bodies left in more than 2,300 cemeteries and isolated burial sites across Europe. The AGRS was not the first organization responsible for the identification and permanent burial of American war dead. A systematized procedure of burial was established after the Civil War, when the United States government created its national cemeteries and separated the Union dead from the Confederate rebel.
The practice of repatriation after World War I likely was connected directly to a collective memory of the Civil War. This earlier conflict had a death toll greater than all other wars combined. To address the problem of burial, as early as 1861, the Quartermaster Department was charged by the War Department with the creation and maintenance of war cemeteries. Records of the quartermaster general were available for military leaders during World War I to study. When they looked at the records, they saw that, in addition to the problems of identification, logistically, the separation of Confederate soldiers from Union soldiers was sometimes impossible. The national cemetery system, devised by Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs in 1861, became a nationwide practice and finished with its burials in 1873. Seventy-five national cemeteries were established for the graves of 170,162 known and 147,800 unknown Civil War soldiers.
Architectural historian Catherine W. Zipf describes how the national cemeteries, being initiated by the federal government, were used as reminders of Union victory and federal power in the South. The reason, she argues, is because of style and design. These cemeteries, with their standing soldier memorials and lodges constructed in Second Empire architectural style were, material symbols of federal power. The State, War and Navy building in Washington, DC, today known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, crowns the Ellipse with its impressive façade capped by a massive mansard roof. Because this building was finished in 1888, in the newest style of the era, the edifice came to symbolize the federal government to American audiences. The timely style coincided that same year with the Condemnation Act, a law that authorized federal officials to seek eminent domain condemnation of land for the purpose of erecting public buildings. When land was seized in the South for Union soldier cemeteries, the architecture created an impression that the cemeteries were material expressions of the Union guard. In these environments made by architectural style, the dead took on a new meaning, becoming ever-mindful sentinels of the Grand Army of the Republic.
These cemeteries were for Union dead only. After Union victories, Confederate dead were lucky if they were identified and buried properly, as the United States government arranged and paid for national cemeteries bearing the graves only of the Union dead. White women in the South were largely responsible for coordinating the burial of Confederate men. The prioritizing of the burial of Union soldiers might be due to the overwhelming nightmare it must have been to bury such numbers. It also, as Zipf suggests, could be due to Meigs's personal vendetta against the Confederacy because his son, who surrendered after an 1864 Confederate ambush, was later murdered and his body never recovered.
Civil War mourning aesthetic was specific, comprised of pointed sculptural programs and detailed cemetery planning, which helped to create the idea of the "good death," as historian Drew Gilpin Faust has explained. Symbolism emphasized ideals and virtues, rather than elevating a specific person. In death, heroism and sacrifice, were valued over personal qualities. In the colonial and antebellum periods, American folklore weighed in heavily in American mourning. One funerary practice was to create a life narrative in writing, an early type of the modern obituary, which was meant to be sung as a ballad at the funeral. These narratives related the story of the death of the deceased, using specific, characteristic conventions in poetry. Beginning with the Civil War, individualizing impulses gave way to broader characterizations based on virtue. The development of the systematic burial of war dead shares a similar impulse, one that presents the dead through conventional structures that specifically frame the death as a war death, or, in other words, a good death. Both approaches are highly organized, however, relating how American mourning is built around strategic and selective remembrance.
THE DECISION: BURIAL ABROAD OR HOME?
Ideology aside, the task of repatriation after World War I was overwhelming. With few exceptions, during the early to mid-twentieth century, military leaders knew almost nothing about handling war dead. When faced with the dead of World War I, involving recovery and identification of almost 80,000 bodies, the AGRS had little comparative experience, not in the volume of bodies, nor in the challenges of identification of remains that had been moldering for months, if not years. In general, as Budreau explains, those in command of the US Army were unaware of the demands that efficient burial practice and repatriation required.
Fortunately for the ill-prepared American military leaders, in 1919, the French government decreed a three-year hold forbidding all exhumations and transport of bodies. This gave the American War Department some time to devise a plan for the promised possibility of repatriation. The War Department sent a letter accompanied by a ballot card to families of the deceased, who are referred to by the government as "next of kin" (NOK). The government prioritized contacting first widows/widowers, then parents, and then siblings. (Thus, if there was a surviving spouse, she or he had the controlling decision over where the deceased was to be buried.) NOK were presented with four options to choose from: burial in a permanent military cemetery overseas; return to the United States for burial in a private cemetery; return to the United States for burial in a national military cemetery; or return to a foreign country, the homeland of the dead serviceman or next of kin, for burial in a private cemetery. The NOK were to mark their wishes regarding the permanent disposition of bodies overseas. For a variety of reasons, they were not given the option of leaving bodies in their original grave. Instead, they could request that the soldier be buried in a permanent cemetery in land ceded to the United States by the French government. According to the Treaty of Versailles, European countries were able to loan land to the United States for war cemeteries, tax-free and in perpetuity. After World War I, nearly forty thousand NOK, requested that their soldiers' remains be repatriated. Congress then allocated five million dollars and authorized the secretary of war, Newton D. Baker (1871–1937), to make all the necessary arrangements.
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (1887–1944) and his family provided a model that many would follow during and after both world wars. Quentin Roosevelt (1897–1918) died during World War I when his plane crashed during a dogfight with German airplanes over the village of Chamery in eastern France. Regarding the death of his youngest son, President Roosevelt alluded to Ecclesiastes, writing, "Where the tree falls, there let it lie." His statement was widely republished, and the Roosevelt family was regarded as exemplary in their decision to bury Quentin in France.
Nevertheless, the majority of NOK, 70 percent, chose to repatriate the war dead after World War I. The process of repatriation drew criticism from religious leaders. In 1920, Bishop Charles H. Brent (1862–1929), the senior chaplain of the American Expeditionary Forces, wrote an open letter published in the New York Times, in which he described the American "fields of honor with perpetual care." He noted the symbolic nature of permanent cemeteries as tools of diplomacy, as well as healing. "It is the work of love," he wrote, "carried through by a sense of reverence for that sacred dust which, though mingled with the soil of France, is forever American." No public mention was made of the gruesome nature of work involved in exhuming and organizing dead bodies into permanent graves. Exhuming, re-casketing, transporting, and reburying characterized any permanent burial, be it in the United States or overseas. Bodies of soldiers killed during battle often were buried in a harried manner, without the benefit of embalming; these remains were in no condition to be looked upon. The general public had varying degrees of awareness of the procedure; some did not care, while others acted as whistleblowers. In 1921, one man wrote in an editorial to the New York Times, "Out of these holes were being dragged — what? Boys whom their mothers would recognize? No! Things without shape, at which mothers would collapse." But most families wanted the bodies in their care, rather than "over there." When, in 1920, the French government lifted the ban on exhumation, plans for repatriation commenced. Congress then estimated that the cost would be thirty million dollars, which breaks down to a cost of five hundred dollars in expenses for the shipment of each body. In 1931, the War Department reported that it had shipped 46,304 bodies to the United States. The remaining bodies were interred in one of the eight permanent cemeteries from World War I located in Europe. The legacy of World War I repatriation became a force within itself. Since the creation of permanent cemeteries after World War I in Europe, the government of the United States has regarded the "fields of honor" as important reminders to a European audience of American sacrifice and American importance in world affairs.
Reflecting similar politics as those involved in repatriation after World War I, American officials after World War II "hoped to set up as many cemeteries as possible in Europe as vivid and lasting memorials of America's contribution to the liberation of Europe." Like they did after World War I, members of the American Graves Registration Service handled the process of repatriation and coordinated with the ABMC to prepare the land for the permanent cemeteries. For the final burial, the NOK of World War II expected the same choices as the NOK had after World War I. As historian John E. Bodnar has demonstrated, many mothers of the fallen even felt that the government owed them repatriation. Nevertheless, the decision of where to bury the fallen soldier, which was so obvious to a 70 percent majority of families after World War I, now was fraught with conflicting emotions, as well as inflected by complex politics. Between 1947 and 1949, of the total 156,000 American war dead in Europe, only 94,200 were repatriated — 64 percent rather than the anticipated 70 percent.
The sheer volume of bodies that needed to be handled was much greater than that of World War I, and this meant huge profits for American businesses, if the bodies were brought home. After World War II, worship services and editorials featured the topic of repatriation, such as a 1947 advertisement in the New York Times: "Our War Dead Come Home: Are We Worthy of Them?" The American public was also aware of the value of overseas cemeteries in cultural diplomacy. One early 1947 editorial in the Baltimore Sun put forth the idea that leaving the dead in Europe was "an expression of the close and personal relationship between Europeans and ourselves." Some argued leaving the war dead in Europe reflected values embedded in militarism, patriotism, and comradery. One parent wrote about his experience visiting his son's grave to the Miami Herald, outlining why he opted to bury his son overseas in Italy. He insisted, "They fought together. They fell together. They should lie together. It is better they should stay with their buddies."
Politicians, including President Truman, pushed a similar view. Truman, one of the architects of America's cold war containment policy, wanted to make a pilgrimage available to families of the fallen, similar to the Gold Star Mothers Pilgrimage after World War I (he never could get it approved by Congress). He stated that, if the NOK could see the care devoted to the graves, "Many would prefer that their loved ones rest forever in the countries where they fell." Other public figures were asked to encourage the burial of American soldiers overseas, as the graves occupied land that seemed American, even if it was on perpetual loan.
But the real driving force behind the debates in 1947 was money. In March 1947, as letters from the American government were sent to the first group of twenty thousand families of the war dead, the funerary industry increased its demands that the dead be repatriated. Congress predicted that the transfer of the remains would require five years, and industries knew from experience after World War I that those five years also meant growth and profit in the economy. Driven by numerous parties who held large stakes in repatriation, the debate of where to bury the dead played out in newspapers across the country. On one side, the American government and most religious organizations argued for the bodies to be left in Europe. On the other side, monument producing companies, undertakers, and casket manufacturers waged "an active propaganda campaign to 'bring the bodies home.'" These businesses reportedly had influential lobbies in Washington, DC. By 1947, the United States government had already placed an order for 250,000 specially made coffins. Yet another problem was informing Americans about their options. Despite the letters sent out and the pamphlets made available on the subject, many Americans reportedly remained unaware of the existence of war cemeteries overseas. Further complicating the issue were organizations that insisted that the bodies stay in Europe. The United States government had to implement federally ordained procedures in casketing the dead.This meant using steel to line the caskets and processing them so as to make them airtight. Accordingly, steel output reached postwar highs, and workers of the Inland Steel Company went on strike. Their wages were increased and certain benefits were amended.
The process of exhumation was kept quiet. Cemetery officials were coached on how to diplomatically refer to the exhumation process. The topic of reburial was tricky; no one wanted to describe the fallen in the state they were, which was brittle bone by this point. Descriptive language between members of the ABMC during the planning stages was delicately used. As one member wrote in early 1947, "the emphasis should be on re-burial, not return." When some American tourists accidentally witnessed the relocation of bodies from grave to grave, they decried the process, referring to it as "ghoulish" and rejecting it as unethical treatment of the dead, an argument with which the mostly Catholic population of France would have agreed. Even the idea of organizing new graves for permanent cemeteries struck many as undignified and disrespectful. Upon hearing of the plans to exhume remains and move them to be buried in permanent cemeteries, one father of a fallen soldier protested, "Let it stand in its present beauty. Let the government and the Army tell our people how quiet rest their boys now, and then let them be at rest!"
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Triumph of the Dead"
by .
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