Where are the veterans buried if killed in action?

Answer 1

Chances are that any US Army soldier killed in action who is in a cemetery in the US today is working on his fourth burial. The WWII US Army was determined that the graves of its dead would not be lost, as has been the case so often in history. Every division had a Graves Registration Detachment. They tried to go about their work unobtrusively, without being noticed. When action was impending the Graves Registration men would locate plots, preferring level, well-drained areas, and would place rocks to approximate headstones, to get an idea how many could be accommodated in a particular plot. These plots were carefully registered on large scale maps of the area. Many a man moving up to the line to go into action passed his future grave site without knowing it. Every US WWII soldier went into action carrying about 70 pounds of gear, and soon learned, or was told by veterans, to ditch most of that if he wanted to stay alive. Part of this gear was a "shelter half", one half of a pup tent - they were supposed to get with a buddy and put two halves together and make a tent. No one ever did this in combat. The quartermasters would collect all this gear, and what the shelter halves wound up being used for was to bury the dead in them. Each man had two "dog tags" worn on a chain around his neck. A form was filled out that made several carbon copies, and one of the dog tags and a copy of this form were put in a little bottle, placed with the body in a shelter half, which was folded around the body and secured with a very big safety pin. The bodies were then buried, and carefully noted on the map. When the action in that vicinity ended and the Army moved on, all these little plots were emptied, the bodies dug up and collected into divisional cemeteries, where they were reburied. This time the soldier usually got a wooden coffin, and a wooden cross (or Star of David) to mark his grave, with his name on it. His buddies, if any were still alive and not in the hospital, might get a chance to come say goodbye before moving on. The dog tags had a hole in one end through which the chain used to hang them around the neck was run, and at the other end there was a semicircular notch. GI lore had it that this notch was so the dog tag could be wedged between your teeth after you were dead. This was not so, and there was no guarantee that you would still have a head after you were dead; what the notch was, was a nail guide. The dog tag buried with the soldier was taken from the bottle, and nailed to the outside of his coffin, one nail through the chain hole, and another through the notch at the other end. After the war was over, all the divisional cemeteries and other temporary burial places were again emptied, and all the bodies were reburied in one of the beautiful permanent cemeteries maintained and administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission. There are several dozen of these, mostly in Europe. Most dead from the Pacific were brought back to Hawaii and buried in the ABMC Cemetery called "The Punchbowl", inside the crater of an extinct volcano. None of the ABMC Cemeteries are in Germany. These Cemeteries are American territory in perpetuity, and this was a permanent burial. There are about 180,000 WWII and WWI men still in those ABMC Cemeteries. In the late 40s, as things settled down, the next of kin of the men buried in these permanent cemeteries were contacted, and offered the option of having the remains of their loved one returned to the states. Once back in the states the men could be reburied in any of the National Cemeteries, such as Arlington, or somewhere closer to home, whatever the family preferred. Quite a few took the Army up on this offer, and those guys are back in the US, many scattered around in older cemeteries in every corner of the country. We can hope they won't have to be disturbed again. See the "Related Link" below for the ABMC website, which has a search function to locate any of the WWII dead still buried overseas in their Cemeteries.