On the morning of December 12, 1985, at 0645 local time (0515 EST), Arrow Airlines flight 1285, a DC-8-63 charter carrying 248 passengers and a crew of eight, crashed just after takeoff form Gander International Airport, Gander, Newfoundland, Canada.
It started out as a fact finding mission by an American congressman.
It ended as one of the most horrendous acts of self-destruction in history.
During the Civil War in the United States, 42 percent of the casualties were unidentified in the late 1860s. By World War II this percentage was reduced to 3 percent in the late 1940s. Today, the US Army is capable of recovering and identifying virtually 100 percent of all US remains lost during a military operation.
As far back as the early 1800s, Quartermaster officers assigned to frontier outposts constructed cemetery plots, buried the dead in marked graves, and kept a fairly uniform record of burial.
The Civil War provided the first recorded incident of American soldiers making an effort to ensure that their identities would be known should they die on the battlefield.
A MOST tremendous appeal to patriotic fervor, to gratitude, and to sentiment, is now materializing in the pilgrimages provided by our government for the mothers and widows of our countrymen who made the supreme sacrifice in the World War, and whose bodies remain in the soil on which they fell in the great cause.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those here who gave their lives for their Nation, might live.
The War Memorial Council had as early as 1922 submitted recommendations to the War Department for the adoption of marble headstones similar to those designed for the national cemeteries in the United States.
The most intensive search in history is being conducted on the far-flung battlefields of World War II.
Story of the 1959-60 search for and recovery of crew members of the B-24 Bomber Lady Be Good.
... is Depot Q-290, the official depository on the Continent for the personal property of U. S. military personnel who have been officially reported deceased, missing, captured, interned, or hospitalized.
This narrative relates some of my personal experiences as a sergeant squad leader in the 603rd Quartermaster Graves Registration Company in the first days of the Allied invasion at Normandy, France, in June 1944.
During the Malmedy Massacre mortuary affairs operation, Quartermaster soldiers added to the Corps’ legacy of mission accomplishment in the face of adverse conditions.
The Quartermaster Corps had primary responsibility for search and recovery, establishment of collection points on the battlefield, initial identification of the deceased, the laying out of cemeteries, and overseeing proper interment.
“Tell me about my boy” is the request most frequently sent to the quartermaster general of the army by next of kin who want additional information on the progress of the war department’s program for the return and final burial of those who died overseas in World War II.
The respect and care for the honored dead, the men who died for an ideal and their country, traditional with the people of the nations embracing western civilization, has never been so resolutely demonstrated as during the present conflict in Korea.
Part of the Armistice Agreement signed in Panamunjom in June 1953 called for the exchange of military war dead on both sides. In the months that followed, members of the U.S. Graves Registration Division in Korea met repeatedly with UN and Eighth Army officials to work out the details for how such an exchange might be effected.
Their determined purpose was to disinter the remains of their fallen comrades who were interred there, and to evacuate them from the area before arrival of the driving Chinese Communist Forces.
Silently searching every foot of the South Korean countryside today are small groups of U. S. soldiers on a little known but earnest mission. Their job is to find the unrecovered remains of United Nations soldiers killed in action.
In December 1992, President George H. Bush ordered troops to Somalia in East Africa to establish eight humanitarian relief sectors. This was the largest humanitarian assistance mission in history: a joint and combined task force of over 38,000 personnel.
The following is a brief summary of the deployment of 14 CSS soldiers in the 54th Quartermaster Company (Mortuary Affairs), some of the first soldiers into Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Europe’s longest conflict since World War II started with a flare-up in Yugoslavia’s northwestern tip. It was enough to shock many. Much worse was to come.
Over in peaceful Arlington, across the historic Potomac, he rests — our Soldier Unknown — his last fight fought, his last journey ended.
Short article on construction of the Tomb and selection of World War I Unknown Soldier.
In depth article on selection of World War II & Korean War Unknown Soldiers.
This article contains details on the construction of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Congress provided the legal sanction for creation of a national cemeterial system by authorizing President Lincoln in the Act of July 17, 1862.
The American Civil War was one of those great conflicts in human history that shaped the political destinies of a continent.
General Meigs vigorously resisted the first obvious attempt to divert the national cemeteries from the purpose originally stated in 1862 and reaffirmed by the joint resolution of April 13, 1866.
Notable improvements in provision for care and final disposition of remains, were furthered by revolutionary innovations in American military organization.
