ABMC AND AMERICA’S GREAT WAR – RETAINING THE PAST

93rd anniversary of Belleau Woods; seen from top of chapel at Aisne-Marne ABMC Cemtery – U.S. 1st Marine Division Public Affairs Office

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

View from the Visitor Center across the Large Pool and at the Chapel on the hill 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.

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MEUSE-ARGONNE ABMC CEMETERY – AMERICA’S GREATEST TEST – THE MEDALS OF HONOR

Flags of the Allied Powers in the Chapel at Meuse-Argonne ABMC Cemetery

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.

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