OUR WWII STORY: Commander visits graves of the fallen in '45

The curtain had barely fallen on World War II’s European Theater when American Legion National Commander Edward N. Scheiberling traveled to the battered continent for Memorial Day observances in 1945. It was the first time since 1939 that such ceremonies were conducted.

This time, the number of U.S. graves in Europe had dramatically increased – adding tens of thousands more from World War II – including more than 17,000 at Henri Chapelle Cemetery in Belgium, the largest – to existing cemeteries where the fallen of World War I had been laid to rest. During his May 1945 tour with American Legion National Graves Registration Committee Chairman Mancel Talcott of Illinois, Scheiberling visited seven cemeteries, the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial and the French Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath Arc de Triomphe in Paris. He profusely thanked the French citizens for protecting and taking care of the American cemeteries during the Nazi occupation and the fighting that followed.

He also paid a visit to Supreme Allied Commander-Europe Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower in Germany, who told the American Legion leader that families of the fallen would be able to choose to have their loved ones repatriated to the United States or keep them on the continent where they drew their last breaths.

Hundreds of temporary cemeteries and isolated gravesites were scattered across Europe at the time; it was not until 1947 that they were consolidated into the 14 now under care of the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Among the temporary cemeteries the commander visited on Memorial Day was that of American Legion founder Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., who was buried in Ste. Mere-Eglise following his death five weeks after coming ashore on Utah Beach on June 6, 1944. He also stopped to pay his respects at the grave of Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair at La Cambe, who died from wounds received near St. Lo in July 1944. The graves of Roosevelt Jr. and McNair were both later permanently moved to the ABMC’s Normandy American Cemetery.

The nearly month-long journey included ceremonies and official visits with U.S. military leaders in France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, England and Italy.

Flying back to the United States, Scheiberling was reflective about the devastation he had seen in war-torn Europe.

“Behind lies an old world torn apart through centuries of discord; countries marked by an eternal struggle of people against ambitious dictators; nations where hopes are born and die with people starving and hope gone,” he wrote. “Ahead lies the United States, the only major power free from the scars of war; its pattern of life intact – the great beacon of freedom in a dark and troubled world.

“Speeding along, one gains a new conception of our country; new determination to help keep our people from going through what I saw in Europe; new dedication to the hope that our nation will never have new cemeteries such as I visited on Memorial Day, and new determination that The American Legion will stand firm and strong for the kind of Americanism that has given our people advantages enjoyed by no others on the face of the globe.”

World War II claimed the lives of more than 416,000 members of the U.S. Armed Forces.