The Foreign Burial of American War Dead

Normandy, Flanders Field and other overseas cemeteries of the American Battle Monument Commission (ABMC) are well known. However, lesser-known burial sites of American war dead exist all over the world—in Australia and across the Pacific Rim, in Canada and Mexico, Libya and Spain, most of Europe and as far north as the Russian Arctic. This is the history of American soldiers buried abroad since the American Revolution. It traces the evolution of American attitudes and practices about war dead and provides the names and locations of those still buried abroad in non–ABMC locations.

Chris Dickon is an Emmy-awarded former broadcast producer whose work develops new information about the human results of Americans at war. He has written about the places where named American war dead are still buried, the role of Americans in the non-American forces of the two world wars, and the social results of U.S. military racial policy and practice in Europe. He lives in Portsmouth, Virginia.

Chris Dickon
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 308
Bibliographic Info: 65 photos, appendices, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2011
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4612-4
eISBN: 978-0-7864-8501-7
Imprint: McFarland

Preface and Acknowledgments      1

1. Seas and Shores      3
2. Prisons and Churchyards      12
3. Safe Havens and Hasty Cemeteries      20
4. In Foreign Lands at Home      27
5. Paris and Parral      36
6. Americans in Any Uniform      44
7. Decisions to Be Made      8
8. Monuments and Pilgrimage: Search for the Lost      69
9. Scattered from the Sky      87
10. Islands and Farmlands      102
11. Expanded Families, Gracious Towns      119
12. Cold Earth and Tropical Earth      137
13. Remembered, Lost, Forgotten, Unknown      148
14. Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Events      166
15. Memorial Day      182

Afterword      212
Appendices      217
Notes      277
Bibliography      283
Index      287

• “This work compiles names and locations of Americans who died in wars on foreign soil who are buried in locations which are outside of the system of the American Battle Monument Commission…the book traces the evolution of American attitudes and practices regarding its war dead”—Reference & Research Book News

• “Dickon has been painstakingly counting, cataloging and mapping the locations of American war dead buried outside formal memorial cemeteries”—PBS Newshour