After World War I, U.S. families were asked if they wanted their dead brought home. 40,000 said yes.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Retropolis

After World War I, U.S. families were asked if they wanted their dead brought home. Forty thousand said yes.

In May 1921, President Harding paid tribute to a ship carrying 5,000 fallen Americans returned for burial



A next-of-kin response card asking for the return of the remains of Pvt. James Argiroplos, who was killed near Hébuterne in France during World War I. (National Archives)

By Michael E. Ruane
May 30, 2021 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

In 1919, when Theodore J. Argiroplos of Keyser, W. Va., received the government post card asking if he wanted the body of his brother shipped home for burial, he entered “yes” on the appropriate line.

Pvt. James Argiroplos, 24, of the 80th Division’s 317th Infantry Regiment, had been killed on Aug. 15, 1918, near a place called Hébuterne in France. And he, and thousands of other dead Americans, were eligible to be buried in an American cemetery in France, or brought home.

So in a massive and little-remembered project after World War I, the United States sent out 74,000 questionnaire cards asking families what they wanted, and then tried to fulfill their wishes.

Sixty-three-thousand answers were received by January 1920, according to historian Lisa M. Budreau. ... And between 1919 and 1922 the government identified, located and exhumed about 44,000 bodies and shipped them home for burial — many to the Washington region.

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French and American soldiers salute at the funeral of one of their comrades at base hospital No. 17, Dijon, France, on Sept. 6, 1918. (National Archives and Records Administration)

By Michael Ruane
Michael E. Ruane is a general assignment reporter who also covers Washington institutions and historical topics. He has been a general assignment reporter at the Philadelphia Bulletin, an urban affairs and state feature writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and a Pentagon correspondent at Knight Ridder newspapers. Twitter https://twitter.com/michaelruane

[Tomconroy]

1. Very moving.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. My great uncle was killed Nov. 6, 1918 (5 days before WWI ended) and he was returned to Ohio.

[Historic NY]

3. I can tell you a little about the process of those removals...

Every American who had a son returned owes a debt of gratitude to graves registrations, the French , and the Black American troops. I won't give you the gory details involved in the process, but I will tell you they were handled with loving care and wrapped or swaddled in new cloth upon their exhumation and examinations and preparations for shipment home. Personal effects which were buried (in bottles) were added to accompany them home (for those who had possibly been moved several times ). There are films of the work out there. I've been working on a local MIA, the soldier with him also an MIA was found, after three moves was sent home to Texas. My guy is still missing. Thousands upon thousands of soldiers were never found, they simply became part of the earth, sinking in to the morass of mud. Their names are inscribed on walls and memorials, they are not forgotten but remembered. It's a slow process but in the past couple years a few hundred soldiers from both sides of the conflict have been found, as recent as this past Nov. some Brits were reburied and a few identified. We await some battlefield grave removal sketches to see if one of the unknowns is ours that lies in the American Flanders Cemetery.