War and Remembrance

Abstract

Every year, people from all over the world visit American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) sites, from Normandy, France, to Busan, South Korea, to Corozal, Panama. At rest in the twenty-six overseas cemeteries are almost 139,000 dead, and memorialized on “Walls of the Missing” are 60,314 fallen soldiers with no known graves. The ABMC administers, operates, and maintains twenty-six permanent American military cemeteries and twenty-seven federal memorials, monuments, and markers. These graves and memorials are among the most beautiful and meticulously maintained shrines in the world. This book is the first study of the ABMC, from its founding in 1923 to the present. It traces the agency’s history, from its early efforts under the leadership of John J. Pershing to establish permanent American burial grounds in Europe after WWI and through the World War II years, where ABMC personnel weathered the storm of another war whose combatants actually passed back and forth through many of the sites. After the war, top-ranking generals, including George Marshall, Jacob L. Devers, and Mark Clark expanded the scope of the commission. The relationship between the monuments and their local hosts constitutes one of the most compelling and least known aspects of the story. Conner’s work powerfully demonstrates that these monuments are living sites that embody the costs of war and aid in understanding the interconnections between memory and history.