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Brookwood American Cemetery and Memorial is the only American Military Cemetery of World War I in the British Isles. Located approximately southwest of London, Brookwood American Cemetery contains the graves of 468 American war dead, including the graves of 41 unknown servicemen, from World War I.〔(Brookwood American Military Cemetery on the AMBC website )〕 Maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission, the cemetery of lies to the west of the civilian Brookwood Cemetery, built by the London Necropolis Company and opened in 1854. The American cemetery is flanked by the much larger Brookwood Military Cemetery, maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which contains more than 5,000 war dead from the two world wars. == History == Most of the dead buried in Brookwood died in Great Britain or its surrounding waters. During World War I, servicemen who died in London hospitals were brought to Brookwood. After the Armistice in 1918, the dead from various temporary sites throughout England, Scotland and Ireland were brought to it. These were members of the American Expeditionary Forces who lost their lives in England or the surrounding waters. Among those reburied in Brookwood American Cemetery were victims of the German U-boat ''UB-77'' attack on the SS ''Tuscania'', a British troop transport of the Anchor Line, sunk on 5 February 1918 off the coast of Scotland. In 1929 the chapel memorial opened. Inside are the engraved names of 563 missing, most of whom served in the United States Navy and Coast Guard, whose graves are in the sea. After the entry of the United States into the Second World War the American cemetery was enlarged, with burials of US servicemen beginning in April 1942. With large numbers of American personnel based in the west of England, a dedicated rail service for the transport of bodies operated from Devonport to Brookwood. By August 1944 over 3,600 bodies had been buried in the American Military Cemetery. At this time burials were discontinued, and US casualties were from then on buried at Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial. On the authority of Thomas B. Larkin, Quartermaster General of the United States Army, the US servicemen buried at Brookwood during the Second World War were exhumed in January–May 1948. Those whose next of kin requested it were shipped to the United States for reburial, and the remaining bodies were transferred to the new cemetery outside Cambridge. Brookwood American Cemetery had also been the burial site for those US servicemen executed while serving in the United Kingdom, whose bodies had been carried to Brookwood by rail from the American execution facilities at Shepton Mallet. They were not transferred to Cambridge in 1948, but instead reburied in unmarked graves at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery Plot E, a dedicated site for US servicemen executed during the Second World War.(One of those executed, David Cobb, was not transferred to Plot E but was repatriated to the US and reburied in Dothan, Alabama in 1949.) The railway service had been suspended in 1941, and North station (renamed North Bar after the ending of rail services) was used as a temporary mortuary to hold these bodies while awaiting shipment to the USA or Cambridge. As the branch line into the cemetery was no longer in use, temporary platforms were built on the branch line serving the National Rifle Association's shooting range at Bisley, on the opposite side of the LSWR line from the cemetery. Following the removal of the US war graves the site in which they had been buried was divided into cemeteries for the Free French forces and Italian prisoners of war. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Brookwood American Cemetery and Memorial」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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