Memorial of the American Military Cemetary

Lorraine American Cemetery and Memorial is a Second World War American military war grave cemetery, located just outside Saint-Avold, Moselle, France. The cemetery, containing 10,489 American war dead (the largest number of American burials in Europe), covers 113.5 acres (45.9 ha), was dedicated in 1960 and contains . It is administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission.

History

Those interred died mostly in the autumn of 1944 during the Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine as the Americans sought to expel the Germans from fortress city of Metz and advance on the Siegfried Line. They were mainly part of the U.S. Third and Seventh Armies.

During and shortly after the war over 16,000 American casualties were interred across the Saint Avold region in France. In the late 1940s many bodies were repatriated to the US or concentrated at Lorraine.

Layout

The cemetery's headstones are arranged in nine plots forming an elliptical design ending with an overlook feature. A memorial has ceramic operations maps with narratives and service flags. Either side of the memorial are Tablets of the Missing commemorating 444 soldiers missing in action (rosettes mark those since recovered and identified).

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Lorraine American Cemetery and Memorial" and modified on July 23, 2019 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.