World War One was a reluctant push onto the global stage for the United States. The country involved itself only with the last nineteen months of the war. A slow starter, it took a year before meaningful numbers of American troops began to reach the European theater. The summer of 1918 saw the development of a new army which learned the lessons the European citizen armies had already earned over almost four years of brutal industrialized killing. Remembrance would come later, enter the ABMC.
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LIVES LOST BEYOND THE MEDALS at MEUSE-ARGONNE ABMC CEMETERY
The mass of the graves at Meuse-Argonne ABMC Cemetery belong to men who did not win medals but still did their duty. They made up the main throng of the two million strong American Expeditionary Force in France during World War One. In two previous posts, I talked about the stories of the men honored with the Medal of Honor or some honored with the second highest Distinguished Service Cross. In this post, some of the other stories found among the graves at Meuse-Argonne come to light. The stories are mostly of officers for their lives were generally a little longer and better recorded than the greater numbers of young enlisted men just starting out in life.
Continue readingMEUSE-ARGONNE ABMC CEMETERY – AMERICA’S GREATEST TEST – THE MEDALS OF HONOR
THE CEMETERY
Meuse-Argonne ABMC Cemetery is by far the largest of the cemeteries administered by the American Battlefields and Monuments Commission from the First World War. In fact, the cemetery is the largest ABMC cemetery in Europe, second in size in the World only behind the giant cemetery on the south side of Manila.
The Meuse-Argonne ABMC Cemetery is located directly in the heart of the area American soldiers fought and died for from 26 September 1918 until the end of the war on 11 November. It was the longest and hardest campaign the American Expeditionary Force was tasked with during the war. Success came, but only after long struggles as the AEF learned what it meant to wage an industrial scale war. The learning curve we see in evidence among the 14,246 men buried here.
Quick facts you can pick up from the cemetery brochure: There are 22 sets of brothers included among the dead; the cemetery covers 130.5 acres; 268 Stars of David and 486 graves of soldiers whose identity remain unknown; 954 names are inscribed on the Tablets of the Missing – men whose remains were never recovered.
Because of the sheer size of this cemetery, I am going to take a couple of blog posts to try and cover a few of the stories lying here.
There are also nine men here who were awarded the Medal of Honor, eight died as a direct result of their actions. They will be whom I concentrate my thoughts upon today.
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