General Pershing: the Cemeteries and Monuments in Europe (American Legion Monthly 1927)
Ten years after Wilson's declaration of war, U.S. General John J. Pershing wrote this article concerning the all the American W.W. I monuments and cemeteries scattered throughout France, Belgium, Italy and Britain.
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Flags for Every Grave (American Legion Weekly, 1920)
An article that appeared in an American veterans magazine concerning the pageantry that would mark the Memorial Day of 1920 at each of the primary A.E.F. cemeteries in France.
"More than 127,000 American soldiers, sailors and Marines gave up their lives during the war...Total battle deaths in the A.E.F. killed in action and died of wounds were 50,329 including casualties in the Siberian force. Deaths from disease including the A.E.F. and men in the home cantonments, were 58,837...No American field of honor will be without it's Memorial Day ceremony, no American grave without its flag and its flowers..."An interesting article that was written at a time it was believed that the A.E.F. cemeteries were going to be closed and the interred repatriated. There is a photograph of an early prototype headstone that was later rejected in favor of a stone cross; references are made to Suresnes Cemetery in Paris.
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Finding the Graves of American Aviators (Literary Digest, 1919)
The difficult task of wandering the war-torn countryside of Europe in search of fallen World War I American aviators fell to a U.S. Army captain named E.W. Zinn. A combat pilot himself, Zinn had roamed France, Belgium and Germany interviewing the local population to see what they knew of American crash sites:"Many times he has come upon a grave with a rude cross on which was scrawled :
'Unidentified Americn Aviator' or 'Two Unidentified American Aviators'" "Captain Zinn has found that in a great many cases American fliers were buried either by the Germans or by civilians with no mark of identification left on them." Click here to read some statistical data about the American Doughboys of the First World War.
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