From Military.com:
“This
Cemetery Is the Final Resting Place for the Army’s ‘Dishonorable Dead’”
(Oise Aisne
American Cemetery)
In a small area
of Northern France, in a town called Seringes-et-Nesles, is a cemetery filled
with soldiers who died fighting to keep France from falling to the Kaiser’s
Germany during WWI. The cemetery, Oise-Aisne American Cemetery, holds the
remains of 6,012 soldiers in plots A-D, some unidentified, as well as a
memorial to the almost 300 who went missing and were never found. There are
many interesting side stories about this cemetery. Famous poet Joyce Kilmer is
buried here. The tombs of the unknown are marked with the same epitaph as the
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.
The most
infamous stories, however, lie in plot E. Officially Plot E does not exist. The
100-by-54 foot oval does not appear on maps, pamphlets, or on any websites.
Ninety-six white markers the size of index cards, carrying only a small ID
number litter the ground in Plot E, overlooked by a single granite cross. No
U.S. flag is allowed to fly over it. The bodies are interred with their backs
to the four plots across the street. Plot E now contains the remains of 94
bodies. Across the street, unmarked, surrounded by thick shrubs and
undergrowth, and accessible only through the supervisor’s office, the infamous
fifth plot inters the “Dishonorable Dead,” Americans dishonorably discharged by
the U.S. Army before being executed for crimes like rape and murder during or
shortly after WWII.
(Oise Aisne
Plot E)
With the
exception of the infamous deserter Eddie Slovik (who was buried here after
becoming the first soldier since the Civil War to be tried and executed for
desertion – his remains have since been repatriated), each criminal faced the
firing squad or the hangman’s rope for the murder of 26 fellow American
soldiers and 71 British, French, German, Italian, Polish and Algerian civilians
(both male and female) who were raped or murdered. British murder victim
Elizabeth Green (age 15) was raped and strangled by Corporal Ernest Lee Clarke
(Grave 68) and Private Augustine M. Guerra (Grave 44). Louis Till (Grave 73),
the father of American Civil Rights Icon Emmett Till, was hanged for his part
in the murder of an Italian woman in 1944. Sir Eric Teichman was shot in the
head by George E. Smith (Grave 52) in December 1944 after Smith was found
poaching on his estate. Smith was hanged on V-E Day. The Army executed a total
of 98 servicemen for these kinds of crimes during WWII. While they were
originally buried near the site of their execution, in 1949 they were all
reinterred to where they are today.
^ It is important
to remember the Soldiers that were a disgrace to the US Military and the US as
a whole the same way as it is important to remember the Soldiers that were
honorable to the US Military and the US as a whole. You have to remember the
bad with the good.
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