Re: WWII US Army Policy forbidding repatriation of bodies

[Phantasee]

During WWII, there was a policy forbidding repatriation of bodies for soldiers of all ranks. What was the specific policy and what was the reason for it? Also: was it just Army of the United States, or did it also include USN/Marines etc?

[Zaune]

The reason for it strikes me as fairly obvious; logistics. Too many casualties per day, too few ships with refrigerated holds to carry them, not enough resources to spare for embalming or a lead-lined coffin.

[Aaron MkII]

Lead lined coffin, whats that about?

[General Zod]

Lead lined coffin, whats that about?

Lots of deaths by chemicals and radiation you wouldn't want seeping back into the ground, at a guess.

[Zaune]

Well, it's a method of insuring that contaminants don't leak out alright; any metal will work, in fact I believe zinc is used more than lead these days because it's cheaper, but any coffin being transported long-distance needs to be airtight and that's easier to achieve with metal than with wood.

[Broomstick]

Had to be logistics - nothing traveled as fast back then, travel to/from combat zones was hazardous so risking pilots/ships to move dead bodies wasn't sensible, and just sheer numbers of dead people. Getting the wounded back home was a logistical nightmare, much less the dead.

[PeZook]

Frankly, shipping a living soldier home so that he could become an instructor would save lives, too. And families of the dead would always be able to arrange for repatriation of the bodies after the war - after all, the entire point was to liberate Europe.

[Thanas]

Moved - very interesting topic that deserved to be saved.

[Broomstick]

And families of the dead would always be able to arrange for repatriation of the bodies after the war - after all, the entire point was to liberate Europe.

Most of them didn't, though - dead Americans were buried by the thousands in Europe and Asia and never came home. There are a couple dozen overseas American military cemeteries.

[PeZook]

I know, it's just that there's all the time in the world to do that once the shooting's over, and it's not like American war graves are desecrated or disrespected anyways. Well, not in Europe at least - I have no idea what the attitudes are towards them in the far east.

[Broomstick]

The US government in most cases (maybe all, I'm not sure) pays for the upkeep and maintenance of those overseas cemeteries. On the other hand, it won't pay for the buried service personnel to be dug up and transported home, which costs tens of thousands and it can be difficult to arrange through civilian means (though not impossible - some people do go through the trouble). Thus, particularly for the middle and lower class, the financial cost of bringing home the fallen becomes quite an obstacle, even an insurmountable one.

For recent wars the military has brought the fallen home, but the numbers are much lower than in WWII.

So far as I know the overseas American cemeteries are respected.

[Zaune]

The US government in most cases (maybe all, I'm not sure) pays for the upkeep and maintenance of those overseas cemeteries. On the other hand, it won't pay for the buried service personnel to be dug up and transported home, which costs tens of thousands and it can be difficult to arrange through civilian means (though not impossible - some people do go through the trouble). Thus, particularly for the middle and lower class, the financial cost of bringing home the fallen becomes quite an obstacle, even an insurmountable one.

I'll have to look this up to check, but I recall reading that before the American Military Cemetery and Memorial was established in Cambridgeshire, USAAF personnel who were killed in the line of duty were sometimes buried in the nearest civilian cemetery to the airbase where they'd been stationed. I think some of them remained there even after it became a permanent memorial.

[Sea Skimmer]

It was common for bodies to be recovered in an advanced state of decay, doing anything but rapidly burying them locally was just asking for massive disease outbreaks. All armies did this in the war. Many would be temporarily buried close to the place they fell, and then moved into larger cemeteries by graves registration personal once the fighting had moved on. British did the same general thing. Even had a strong desire existed to bring the bodies home the US had a critical shortage of refrigerated ship throughout the war, the entire Pacific fleet for example had just three in its service squadron. Dedicating even one to transporting bodies home, which wouldn't have been enough, was highly unrealistic.

Postwar large numbers of bodies were in fact brought home when the families requested it. The rest were further consolidated into a few dozen large cemeteries.

Historically the idea of bringing all the dead home is of course very new, prior to the 19th century it was unheard of except for prominent officers. The US Civil War started the US policy of collecting together scattered graves into larger cemeteries, in part because the bodies would be so haphazardly spread around at major battlefields. In WW1 about two thirds of bodies were eventually shipped home several years after the war, but this happened in large part because the process of collecting scattered graves into larger graveyards did not occur during the war at all. This was actually highly unpopular in France and Britain, people saw it as disturbing the dead for no good reason.

The Korean war is when the US began bringing all bodies home, because the military had no faith we would retain the territory the dead lay on in the face of the communist onslaught, and the war was so damn unpopular in general. Meanwhile long range high speed air transport had made it feasible to do so in a timely manner without the bodies decaying excessively.