Military History | Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery — The Ground That Got Smaller

The American Graves Registration Service opened a burial ground on the slope east of Romagne-sous-Montfaucon on 14 October 1918, with the Meuse-Argonne offensive four weeks from its end. A panoramic photograph made here the following year, held by the Library of Congress, is lettered across the negative: "Romagne Cemetery, France. Where more than 23,000 American dead sleep the last sleep." The place French records call the Cimetière américain de Romagne-sous-Montfaucon holds 14,246 graves today. Both counts stand, because two things were done to this ground at once. Citing Public Law 389 of the 66th Congress, the American Battle Monuments Commission records that families of the American dead overseas were entitled to choose between a permanent grave abroad and repatriation, and that the majority chose repatriation, approximately thirty per cent asking for burial overseas. A Historic American Landscapes Survey report on the St. Mihiel American Cemetery is more exact: of the inquiries sent to families in 1919, "59 percent wanted their soldier returned and 26 percent requested burial overseas," with 14 per cent unanswered; by the end of June 1925, 46,214 bodies had gone home and 30,405 remained in American cemeteries in Europe. While the exhumations went on, remains were being concentrated here from temporary cemeteries across the region, from the Vosges, from occupied Germany and from Russia. The rows filled as they emptied. Georges Chevalier photographed the ground for Albert Kahn's Archives de la Planète on 22 September 1920, on autochrome plates inventoried A23937 to A23946 — wooden crosses in their thousands, a walled terrace, flower beds already set. The marble came later, and the cemetery was inaugurated on Memorial Day, 30 May 1937. Its loggia panels carry 954 names of men never recovered or never identified. Open daily, nine to five. The clipped lime hedge closing the far end of the grave sections is not in Chevalier's plates. 📸 Cover: autochrome A23939, the cemetery at Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, 22 September 1920 — Georges Chevalier, musée départemental Albert-Kahn / Département des Hauts-de-Seine, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Second image: the grave sections today — Wilson44691, CC0. Third: autochrome A23942, the wider view from the same day — Georges Chevalier, CC BY-SA 4.0.