Well, hello everyone.
I am Ranger Dan Vermilya at Eisenhower National Historic
Site in Gettysburg, PA joining you for one of our five star
conversation videos.
Today we have a great program for you, a great program that
we're recording at the distance of many miles.
I don't know that we've had a a virtual guest joining us at such
a distance before.
Today's program is exploring A fascinating topic on how we
remember the Second World War and commemorate the fallen from
that conflict, the topic that was very near and dear to the
heart of our own General Dwight D Eisenhower.
And for this topic, we've reached out to our friends with
the American Battle Monuments Commission and specifically to
our friends at the Ardennes American Cemetery and Memorial.
We're joined by Vincent Joris, a cemetery associate joining us
all the way from Belgium virtually.
Vincent, welcome and thank you for joining us for our
conversation in our program and I thank you for inviting me to
such a great occasion to present our site.
We're we're very happy to have you very happy to have a a
fascinating conversation with you and and for those who may
not be familiar with the ABMC this is this is the agency of
our government that protects and preserves commemorates preserves
these cemeteries around the world of of fallen American
service members from various conflicts.
I think the majority are the first and Second World War.
So you have ABMC sites and places all around the globe
including Belgium with with the Ardennes.
So could you maybe start off by telling us a little bit about
the background of the Ardennes American Cemetery and Memorial,
how it evolved in the early years of its existence at the
end of the war into being a more permanent burial grounds?
Yes, Ardenness was one of the very numerous temporary
cemeteries erected during the hostilities by the fighting
troops and then taken over by the Grave Registration services,
and it was at first not very active, nor very large.
It was designed to be used to bury the soldiers who they knew
they would be finding in the various battlefields around the
Ardennes the bulge offensive of the Germans.
This is a battle that was extremely mobile and as a result
a lot of soldiers went missing during that.
During that battle the authorities, the army
authorities knew they would be finding remains when the the
areas were cleared and they needed a new place to bury those
soldiers because the actual battle cemetery that was active
at the moment, Henri Chappelle was overflowing.
They had close to 20,000 soldiers buried there plus
German casualties.
And the other cemetery which was close to was way too far
from the front line to be really useful.
There was a temporary cemetery in the town of Bastogne as well,
but the destruction caused by the hostilities in that region
made it very complicated to also use it permanently until the end
of the war.
But this this cemetery here that was created close to the town of
Lierge by service troops only saw 300 burials before the end
of the hostilities.
The situation of the site very close to a city which had the
infrastructure needed for transportation of the remains,
pushed the authorities to make it a permanent site for
identification of all the remains they knew they would be
collecting after the end of the war.
And that's what they did.
They sent teams all across Europe, principally to recover
the crews of bombers and the fighter pilots that had fallen
beyond and enemy lines beyond reach of the the grave registration
services During war.
They brought those bodies back, and those bodies sometimes had
been buried for a long time.
They needed to be examined by specialists, forensic
specialists, anthropologists, in order to give them a name.
This is why this cemetery grew from a mere 300, just one plot
of of graves up to almost 14,000, even more to 14
thousand during the course of its existence from 1945 to 1949,
when the repatriation program started for this place, it had
already been ongoing for other temporary cemeteries where
identification was not as complicated, because the
soldiers had been buried during war, close to where they fell,
and they had been positively identified before then, so it
was easier to reach out to the families.
But here the nature of the the research for the remains, the
state in which the remains were, most of them airmen, lost in the
crash of their planes.
They needed long operations to be able to give names to those
soldiers.
So they only started the repatriation program here in
1949.
So the Ardennes really is is unique in that you have stories from
all over the ETO represented in your cemetery.
Yes most cemeteries that the ABMC administers are linked with a
battle, a specific battle in the area where they were
established.
The audience was established on a site where there has been no
battle, at least the the nearest battle is is the bulge area, but
otherwise the Germans vacated the place before the US forces
advanced into the the villages around here.
So we were only created out of a need for the identification of
remains found after the end of the battle.
And those remains, they were found all across Europe.
So they were brought from all battle sites where the situation
during conflict did not warrant their discovery.
They had to be they had to be searched for after the battle,
and most of them had been buried for a long time or had been
killed in circumstances that made it very difficult to
identify them without specific help from specialists.
And this, this place is where they installed the central
identification point to perform all those operations of
identification of lost remains.
And and a lot of those, those lost remains that they're
searching and identifying are those those airmen, those downed
airmen from all over Europe.
Yes, that poses a lot of challenges, doesn't it, that
that process of tracking them down, it does.
The finding of death for these airmen is a long process that
was started first by a period of what they called propaganda,
where they published in all the the little towns, cities,
villages all across Europe which had been the target of bombings
or even were on the on the the per course of the planes during
those missions.
Asking the population to disclose information about
anything they knew if there were Allied, specifically American,
but sometimes any any allied bodies that had been buried
nearby, or plane wrecks that had been that had not been searched
during the hostilities.
And so with that information coming in, they could send teams
to those places exhume remains, bring them here, determine if
they were actually American remains, and then perform all
the duties for the identification.
Of course, airmen, they were lost long beyond enemy lines.
The circumstances of their deaths were very traumatic plane
crashes.
It's never pretty.
And so it was really important to have that labor here
That's the reason why we have so many airmen here.
They were the ones that were, for the vast majority, lost for
a long time compared to the ground troops that were found
almost immediately after their death.
Most of the time, yes.
And that work is so vital, you know, to the mission of the
Battle Monuments Commission.
It's not just preserving the cemeteries, but seeking that
sense of identity on these fallen individuals is a is a
very appropriate, if not the most appropriate way to honor
them.
That work has gone on for many years even, you know, even in
the years after it was dedicated.
Correct?
Yes.
And it's still going on now.
The soldiers buried in our cemeteries that are identified,
they are buried here for most of them because the family opted to
have them buried overseas.
Sometimes it is because of soldiers own wishes made it
desirable to have him buried where his comrades fell, where
he fell.
And for some cases there was no family to contact because
unfortunately the procedure of identification didn't bear
fruit.
They are the unknowns, and this site, having received the
largest number of bodies to identify, is also the site where
the largest number of unknowns is buried.
For the all of ETO, we have close to 800 soldiers who still
don't have a name.
But that's not the end of the story.
Since 2016, the Department of Defence has coordinated an
effort to identify as many of these unknowns as possible.
Every ABMC cemetery contains the remains of unknown soldiers,
specifically this one with almost 800.
The other large cemetery with a lot of unknowns is Manila, where
there's close to 3000.
And so DPAA, the Defence Prisoners of War Missing in
Action accountancy Agency, is sending teams to our cemeteries
after a long research in the files that they have, those
files that were built by the laboratory.
So they contain a lot of evidence, evidence that was not
sufficient to give a name to the remains, but which can be used
now to search in a specific direction.
If there is enough evidence in the file, they can try and
contact families, obtain DNA samples and with the DNA samples
they can compare with what is found in the bones that are
buried here.
So they come and exhume the remains with our help, send them
back to laboratory which is situated either in offered air
base in Nebraska or in Hawaii.
And they analyse the DNA defined in the bones and compare it with
the samples they've received from the potential families that
can be linked with these soldiers.
So far from here they've exhumed 270 soldiers and they've already
identified more than half, which means that 130 some families, 80
years after they lost a member, are now rejoined with that lost
member of the family.
And the story goes on from there.
So it's a it's a great joint effort from the the whole ABMC
and the Department of Defence to bring those boys back home.
Well, it's such a powerful story you know here in Gettysburg in
the Gettysburg National Cemetery originally established after the
Civil War Battle 1863, where Lincoln spoke and gave his Gettysburg
Address.
This is was part of a repatriation effort after World
War One and after World War 2.
There's over 500 fallen World War 2 service members buried
here.
Part of that broader repatriation after the war.
But it's it's such a powerful story with the Ardennes because
that repatriation is is still ongoing with the identification
process.
It's it's a powerful continuing story.
It is times have changed for World War One and World War 2.
Approximately 60% of the soldiers were what repatriated
for World War One.
We have discovered through research about the identity of
the soldiers that a lot of them still had family in Europe.
They had emigrated, but their parents had stayed in their
original country in Europe and that's why they were buried
here.
For World War 2 it's less so, but still the proportion stays
the same for the new identifications.
Of course, we are three generations from those wars.
And the families, they are very American, even though they may
remember their European roots there.
It's their country really.
So they bring, they bring their bodies back home to stay.
Some of them might decide to have those remains reburied in
one of our centuries because it's still one of their options.
They're still given the same options as right after World War
Two.
They can ask for permanent burial in one of our permanent
sites.
We hope it would happen but we don't know until now none have
requested such a such a service.
Well on this on this idea of of the continuing work of of
remembering identifying.
Can you talk a little bit about how in the identity you still
commemorate these fallen today?
How does the cemetery still actively commemorate these these
stories.
We do a lot of research about the soldiers that are buried
here identified.
It is a very complicated task, of course, because we have a
very limited staff, but we work in close cooperation with the
visiting families.
Whenever we have a visiting family, we share with them what
little we know about the soldier if we were not able to find a
lot of things.
And sometimes they will offer to share with us whatever they have
about their their forebear, their grandfather, grand great
uncle.
And sometimes it amounts to a lot of things.
We have a few years ago, in 2009, received a family of
second lieutenant Grant M Turley, who was a fighter pilot, actually
one of the Aces.
He was credited with seven kills and that family.
When the personal belongings of lieutenant Turley were sent back
home, they discovered all his Diaries that he kept during the
war and that also kept all the letters he had sent back home,
and all the letters that his mother's father, his fiancee's
wife afterwards sent him.
They were all in his in his trunks.
So they were able to put all these together in a book to tell
his story from his birth to his death, which is for us a real
treasure.
That's something we very rarely find.
We can trace the genealogy using specialized websites.
We can have an idea of who the soldier was in his civilian
life, because most of them, of course, were civilians and not
professional soldiers.
But having such precious information detailing how he
grew up when he was sick, what sports he practiced, what were
his passions in life, who were his friends, and all kinds of
really important details about his life make that soldier
really much, very much alive for us.
And we use that information with the public we receive here,
groups, school groups, tourist groups.
We present that information in an interpretive way, and putting
the soldier in such a a living portrait is much better than
just giving them details of the battles, because dates, places,
numbers.
You forget the story of a living person, even though he's dead,
but the the living story of a soldier who lost his life that
they will bring back with them, and even if they don't remember
the details, it will stick with them because it talks to the
human emotions.
Oh, absolutely.
And I agree entirely.
Certainly we can talk about those stories of the battles and
the leaders, but it's what I've found as well as these personal
stories are are what really connect visitors and connect the
public with the meaning of this conflict, that this wasn't
something that just happened in the book, it was a real thing
that impacted families.
And these cemetery sites are a wonderful continuing tribute and
hitting burial ground as we would continue to remember them.
And you mentioned you have you have lots of visitors coming
through the cemetery today, various groups visiting and you
all hold like a annual Memorial Day ceremony there as well.
We do, yes, yes, every every one of our centuries.
Also Memorial Day ceremony.
We hold ours on the Saturday before the actual Memorial Day
so that local audience can attend.
And we usually reach an audience of around 1500 to 2000 persons.
We have official representation.
The Ambassador of the United States to the King of Belgium is
always in attendance.
the US military representative to NATO is usually the the
general or Admiral that's attending.
We are helped for the organization of that ceremony by
the local Brussels, the US Embassy, and by an association
called the American Overseas Memorial Day Association, which
happens to be the first American Association to ever celebrate
Memorial Day ceremonies in war cemeteries in Europe.
And they started even before ABMC existed, actually exactly
on the same year in Belgium as the the establishment of the
ABMC, because the first Memorial Day was held in the Flanders
Field Cemetery in 1923.
And that's the year when ABMC was established by Congress.
So we share the same birthday.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Well, well Vincent, thank you for joining us and and sharing
some of this story and the powerful work that you all do.
On behalf of of so many across the United States, we say thank
you to you all for taking care of these burial grounds, these
cemeteries looking after the headstones and the graves of
these fallen Americans who are are still buried many miles from
their home.
I I have not had the privilege of visiting the Ardennes
Cemetery.
I visited the the Normandy Cemetery many years ago.
And even though it was thousands of miles from the border of the
United States, it still felt like home being there.
And that was a very powerful emotion that it's tough to put
into words being thousands of miles from home but still
feeling like you are at home surrounded by the the graves of
so many American service members.
So the ABMC does incredible work.
Thank you for for what you all do and thank you for joining us
for our virtual program today.
It's been a privilege talking with you and learning more about
this fascinating process of remembering the fallen,
preserving their their burial places, identifying the fallen
and the unique role that the Ardennes American Cemetery and
Memorial has played in that process.
So thank you for joining us today.
Thank you, Daniel.
All right and everyone watching, thank you for joining us.
And stay tuned to our Eisenhower National Historic Site website
and social media pages for more virtual content and programming.
Thank you Here from Ranger Dan in Gettysburg.