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Recovering the Identity of Lost Soldiers

5/24/2024

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PicturePhoto credit: author. Taken inside the American Cemetery new Belleau Woods.
When I visited American World War I cemeteries in Europe in 2019, one of the most sobering things to see were the graves to unmarked soldiers. Historically, most soldiers who died in battle were never identified. The Graves Registration Service, called Mortuary Affairs" since 1991, has changed that. This organization is charged with making sure that fallen American soldiers are identified and are laid to rest in proper burial places.

From ancient times, rank-and-file soldiers were usually stripped of arms and armor and left on the battlefield for human and animal scavengers. In later centuries, a swift burial near the place of death became the norm. Only in the case of the famous or the high ranking was an effort made to identify the deceased. In remote American frontier outposts, quartermasters buried dead soldiers, often without a coffin since wood was in short supply. They marked the graves with whatever they had on hand, and entered the death into the records. Forts moved, grave markers fell down or rotted away, and the location of the graves were lost to time. 
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Things hadn’t changed much by the time the United States invaded Mexico during the 1846-47 Mexican-American War. When the U.S. government wanted to build a monument to the men who died in the Battle of Buena Vista, they could not find where General Zachary Taylor, who later became our 12th President, had buried his fallen men because he did not mark the location on the map in his report. 

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During the American Civil War, soldiers themselves began to take their identification should they die in battle into their own hands.  Although there was no officially mandated form of identification, soldiers often pinned paper slips on their coats with their name and address. Others bought commercially made badges with their name and unit engraved. 

When the Union Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan River and entered Virginia on May 4, 1864, they were appalled to find the bones of their former comrades, lost a year earlier, lying unattended on the ground. Many soldiers examined the remains for markings on clothing or equipment, the nature of the fatal wound, and dental peculiarities such as missing teeth in an attempt to identify the fallen. This approach became the centerpiece of 20th century identification methods. Once done, the men buried the deceased before moving on.
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Captain James M. Moore of the Quartermaster Cemeterial Division personally led a group of his men to the field after the Battle of Fort Stevens outside Washington, D.C. They searched for and recovered both remains and personal items, identifying every single Union soldier lost in that battle. This effort helped establish the Quartermaster Corps as the entity in charge of caring for the fallen. 
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By war’s end, Congress had authorized a national cemetery system and the remains of Union soldiers were disinterred and reburied at them. One of those cemeteries was created through the efforts of John P. Slough, the Union Commander at the Battle of Glorieta Pass.  After the war he returned to New Mexico to serve as the territory’s Chief Justice and during that time he helped create the Veteran’s cemetery in Santa Fe to inter the Union soldiers who had died while serving under him. Later, Confederate soldiers were reinterred there as well.  Nation wide, some 300,000 dead soldiers were moved from their temporary graves to the newly established national cemeteries.
During the Spanish-American War, the U.S. became the first country to institute the policy that soldiers killed abroad should be returned to their next-of-kin. In the Philippines, Chaplain Charles C. Pierce established the QM Office of Identification and started developing what have become the modern identification techniques. He collected information such as place of death, the nature of the wounds, and the physical characteristics of the deceased soldiers, resulting in unprecedented accuracy even with bodies weeks or months old. He also suggested that a soldier's combat field kit should contain an "identity disk," the forerunner of the "dog tag" that American soldiers began wearing in 1917, when America entered World War I.
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General John (Black Jack) Pershing, the leader of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, recalled the now-retired Major Pierce into service to head the newly created Graves Registration Service (GRREG) so that the 47,000 U.S. servicemen who would die in Europe could be found, identified and returned home.
Pershing noted the courage of these men in recovering the bodies of their comrades in 1918: 

"(They) began their work under heavy shell of fire and gas, and, although troops were in dugouts, these men immediately went to the cemetery and in order to preserve records and locations, repaired and erected new crosses as fast as old ones were blown down. They also completed the extension to the cemetery, this work occupying a period of one and a half hours, during which time shells were falling continuously and they were subjected to mustard gas. They gathered many bodies which had been first in the hands of the Germans, and were later retaken by American counterattacks. Identification was especially difficult, all papers and tags having been removed, and most of the bodies being in a terrible condition and beyond recognition.”
While some of the dead were disinterred from temporary cemeteries and returned to the U.S. after the war, 30,000 were left in permanent cemeteries in Europe. Like former President Theodore Roosevelt, who requested that his son, Quentin, be buried near the site where his plane crashed, many believed that soldiers killed overseas should remain there. 
The GRREG was disbanded after World War I and had to be reactivated in World War II, when 30 GRREG companies worked in perilous conditions. Famous war correspondent Ernie Pyle reported that the men recovering the dead during the heavy fighting at Anzio frequently had to take shelter in freshly dug graves. They also had to deal with dangers such as booby-trapped bodies and snipers. When collecting bodies and taking them to temporary burial sites, the GREGG tried to use a route that avoided combat troops so the latter wouldn't have to be confronted with the death of their comrades. The grisly work resulted in some of the highest rates of PTSD in the military.
During the Korean War in 1950, the chaotic nature of the front, the mountainous terrain, and the uncertain lines of communication prevented the establishment of large cemeteries. The 108th QM Graves Registration Platoon, the only grave registration unit in Korea, sent 15 men to each of the three U.S. divisions to help in the construction of individual division cemeteries, which ended up being dug up so they wouldn't fall into enemy hands. The policy of "concurrent return, sending the fallen to the U.S. without first going into a temporary cemetery, which is still in effect today, grew out of that turmoil.

By the time of the Vietnam War, the identification of war dead had improved greatly, aided by ever-improving transportation, communication and laboratories. Only 28 American soldiers killed during the Vietnam War remained unidentified by the war's end. Using DNA analysis, the last one was identified in 1998.
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May it be that no future comrade in arms will ever have to remain "known but to God."


Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former educator who writes historical fiction for middle grade readers through adults. You may read more about her and her books here, on her website. 
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The Aisne-Marne American Cemetery: A Monument of Remembrance

10/20/2022

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Americans call November 11th Veteran's Day, and use the day to honor veterans of all wars . But originally November 11th observed Armistice Day, the when World War I ended, at least officially. .

There are many cemeteries in Belgium and France that hold the remains of Americans killed during the First World War. Unlike the cemeteries in Normandy, which contain those killed during the D-Day Invasion in World War Two, many of the World War 1 cemeteries recieve very few visitors each year.


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The Aisne-Marne American Cemetery covers 42.5-acres at the foot of the hills that holds Belleau Wood. It contains the graves of 2,289 war dead. Most of these men came from the U.S. 2nd Division, which included the 4th Marine Brigade, and fought in the 20 day long battle for Belleau Wood. Also buried here are soldiers from the 3rd Division who  arrived in Château-Thierry and blocked German forces on the north bank of the Marne throughout June.and July of 1918.

The second largest number of New Mexicans killed in France during World War I died at the Battle of Chateau-Thierry. Many of them were part of  Battery A of the New Mexico National Guard, which came from Roswell. The 28 New Mexicans killed in this battle are interred at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery together with 2,261 AEF soldiers.  

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The carved marble at the top of the pillars that flank the entrance to the French Romanesque chapel depict soldiers engaged in battle in the trenches.
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One of the stained glass windows inside displays the insignias of American divisions engaged in the area. Another window has the crests of countries on the Allied side of the war.
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The inside of the chapel is inscribed with the names of 1060 men who were missing after the battles. Some of those names have a small brass star next to them. That means the body was later found and identified.
It has been over a hundred years since World War I ended. There are no veterans left for us to honor. But we must never forget, and we must continue to honor the men who went "over there" and fought to keep us free. 

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Jennifer Bohnhoff is a native New Mexico with an interest in history. In 2019, she had the privilege of touring the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and walking through Belleau Wood. That experience led her to writing A Blaze of Poppies, a novel about New Mexico's involvement in World War I. 

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A Visit to Sleepy Hollow

10/31/2021

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This summer I visited family on the east coast. While there, I got to visit the Old Dutch Church, in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
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The Old Dutch Church was built somewhere around 1685 by settlers to the area when it was still under Dutch control, and New York was still New Amsterdam. The church is part of the Lutheran branch of Christianity, and still has services. 

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The church was locked up on the day that I visited, so I didn’t get to see what it looks like inside. I did, however, spend several hours touring the cemetery.
I love cemeteries, especially old ones. The tombstones tell so many stories. This tombstone has the names of three children, Cornelius, Jacob and Catalyia, who all died on September 24, 1794.  


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I took a picture of this tombstone because of the interesting use of English. It says the woman is the relict of a man. I had to consult a dictionary to learn that relict is an old word for widow. 
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Many of the tombstones had American flags and badges indicating that the buried was a veteran. This is the grave of one of the many Revolutionary War veterans who were interred in this cemetery. There was a large area with Civil War dead, including one who, if I read the dates correctly, died during the war when he was only twelve years old. I assume he had been a drummer boy. There were World War I tombstones, like the one pictured below, and tombstones from later wars as well. 

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When most people think of Sleepy Hollow, they think of Washington Irving, an early American author. He is buried here, too. 
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Irving’s short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow put this little town on the literary map and into American consciousness. I think most people know the story of the pompous and prudish teacher Ichabod Crane, who meets his match in the strapping farmboy Brom Van Brunt as they battle for the hand of the fair and rich Katrina Van Tassel. (If you don’t know the story, you can read it here.)

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While the story may be fiction, Irving set it firmly within the real place he lived. The cemetery was filled with Van Tassels. This stone is written in Dutch, but others were in English. It’s clear that this was a prominent family in the community.

​The stream that is part of the story still exists as a little rill that runs right past the church, but the covered bridge is gone, replaced in more recent times by this concrete one.

 
And the headless horseman? Supposedly a Hessian soldier who was decapitated by a cannonball during an unnamed battle of the American Revolution, he’d not been searching long for his head, since the story is set in 1790. If he’s searching still, tonight would be the night!
Wishing all of my readers a safe Halloween! 

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical fiction. To learn more about her and her books, go to her website. 
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    ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

    I am a former middle school teacher who loves travel and history, so it should come as no surprise that many of my books are middle grade historical novels set in beautiful or interesting places.  But not all of them.  I hope there's one title here that will speak to you personally and deeply.

    What I love most: that "ah hah" moment when a reader suddenly understands the connections between himself, the past, and the world around him.  Those moments are rarified, mountain-top experiences.



    Can't get enough of Jennifer Bohnhoff's blogs?  She's also on Mad About MG History.  

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    Looking for more books for middle grade readers? Greg Pattridge hosts MMGM, where you can find loads of recommendations.

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