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Show . ' -- Return of Army oi American Dead Near ILnd I , Unloading American dead from a transport at New York. '(By Ralph Hayes former Secretary ;o thc Secretary of War) Wi.SWINCTo.V. J; n. U.; Pilgrim age of American soldier dead from l overseas is ending. Upwards of 42,-j 42,-j 000 bodies from the dead of the A. E. P. have been brought home A few i more than 2000 are yet to come. Ap-I Ap-I proximately 81,600 u ill remain perma-j perma-j nently iu Europe. From the war's beginning the gov-I gov-I emment's policy regarding the return I of military dead has been uniform. It expressed thc hope that families might approve the internment of sol- dier relatives in American cemeteries cemeter-ies abroad, but the option of leaving or returning the body lay with the nearest of kin When the armistice came, with bodies bod-ies having been buried where they fell, there were 2400 American burial places and many isolated graves along the front lines That number has been gradually reduced Eventually there will be one main American burial place in Britain at Brookwood In Surrey, about 24 miles issiBWpsWPgjSjSjBHsjB . , SC3eHaSajipCTrr'f . - THE PERMANENT AMERICAN SOLDIER CEMETERY AT CHAUMONT, FORMER GENERAL HEADQUARTERS HEADQUAR-TERS OF THE A E F. I from London and six in France to i I be known as the cemeteries of the' Aisne-Marne, Meuse Argonne, Somme, Oise-Alsne. S( Mlhiel and Sureenes. ( If the French American burial 1 places the Meuse Argonne Is the larg-' larg-' est. Upwards of 20,000 graves aro' there. At two other places, besides the Brookwood burial spot in Britain. ;. tew American bodies are likely to remain. re-main. One is the Isle of Islay. where Tuscan la victims were washed ashore, and the other is at Cliveden, in the valley of the Thames, where Lady Nancy Astor, member of parliament and native of Virginia, made her Italian Ital-ian villa into '.i war-time hospital. A committee of the national line arts commission has prepared plans for landscaping and construction work on the American burial plots abroad, and designed a standard headstone to mark each grave. The stone is of American white marble, mar-ble, 38 inches long and 10 inches widl at the top. In a circle on the face of the stone is cut ?n emblem of the sol dler's religious faith. The task of repatriating thousands of bodies and of concentrating other thousands was and is tremendous. After much time and argument America Amer-ica and France finally reached an agreement permitting evacuation of our dead from the "zone of military operations." Bringing back the phantom army has been the work of the quartermaster quartermas-ter general's department. Its ceme-terlal ceme-terlal division at Washington operates through the machinery of tbe graves registration service in France. There ar' few previous undertakings with which to compare its accomplishments. - m-- km WW 5 Sfci sfw, W One of the temporary American ceme teries in France. Soldier buried here, E ;are being transferred to the perma E'' nent bunal grounds. ifef. |