The Literary digest history of the world war, compiled from original and contemporary sources: American, British, French, German, and others . a Fourth of July whichSeeger had hoped to celebrate inParis. Scattered through France fromAlsace to Flanders there were nowgraves of thousands of Americansoldiers who had fallen in battleor died in hospitals. The mainte-nance, marking, and listing ofthese last resting-places had formonths been lodged in the GravesRegistration Servicje of the Ameri-can Army, that was making aneffort to assemble graves so far aspossible. About one hundred andfifty America
The Literary digest history of the world war, compiled from original and contemporary sources: American, British, French, German, and others . a Fourth of July whichSeeger had hoped to celebrate inParis. Scattered through France fromAlsace to Flanders there were nowgraves of thousands of Americansoldiers who had fallen in battleor died in hospitals. The mainte-nance, marking, and listing ofthese last resting-places had formonths been lodged in the GravesRegistration Servicje of the Ameri-can Army, that was making aneffort to assemble graves so far aspossible. About one hundred andfifty American cemeteries existedin the valleys of the Meuse andAire, fifty near Nancy, Toul andLuneville, another fifty north ofChateau-Thierry, twenty-five southof Montdidier, besides the cemeteries in the Vosges, in rearareas, base-ports and points around Amiens, where Ameri-can soldiers had fought with the British. More than fiftythousand American graves were in time recorded. Within a year a proposal was under consideration to createcentral cemeteries commemorative of various phases of theAmerican effort in France, and where shafts could be put. Alan Seeger, the Poet Seeger, serving in the Foreign Legion, met hiis deatii before we entered ttie war 243 ON THE WESTERN FRONT up containing the names of those whose bodies had not beenrecovered owing to a kind of fighting that so often destroyedevery vestige of the human form. To these cemeteries inFrance relatives could make pilgrimages, for it had becomequite out of the question longer to consider any plan of dig-ging up American dead and sending bodies back to Americain large numbers. A Red Cross man went through thesecemeteries taking photographs of every single grave to besent to the soldiers family. Many hundreds had to beburied in blankets or in burlap, not in coffins, so that ex-humation was impossible. AVhen a soldier died, his gravewas temporarily marked with his name on a sort of shingle;
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectworldwar19141918
