Now all roads lead to France and heavy is the tread
Of the living; but the dead returning lightly dance.
Edward Thomas, Roads

Saturday, February 29, 2020

The Great Photo Collection of the American Battle Monuments Commission


American Eagle Sundial at the St. Mihiel Cemetery

During the recent WWI Centennial commemorations the staff of  the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) did a wonderful job of making more of their organization's photo collection available for downloading online. Included in hundreds of photos now available are images of the American cemeteries and monuments overseas—all professional quality like the image from the St. Mihiel Cemetery above—plus some outstanding period and action shots. Here is a selection of six more photos from the ABMC collection.

After Belleau Wood, Marines Pose with a Captured German Minenwerfer


An Aerial Image Captures the Scale of the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery



President and Mrs. Wilson Lay a Wreath at Suresnes Cemetery,
Memorial Day 1919


Deck Crew Firing from Destroyer USS Little on Convoy Duty


The Spectacular Memorial Atop Montfaucon,
Captured 27 September 1918

To browse the entire collection, just click on the link below and go to the "Cemeteries and Memorials" section.


ABMC.gov

3 comments:

  1. ABMC is one of America's Treasures!

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  2. Mike et al.: It is worth noting that the ABMC has somewhere a set of "Terrain Photographs - American World War Battlefields in Europe". I believe the Congress charged the ABMC with taking such photographs in the establishing legislation for the Commission. These were done in the mid-1920s, by divisional areas of operations. To my knowledge, these were never formally published, but rather distributed in portfolio size sets, again by division, to the Congress and a limited number of military headquarters, military schools, libraries, and the like. Occasionally one appears for sale on eBay. I also heard that as part of the recent Centennial commemoration, the ABMC contracted with a photographer to re-shoot the terrain scenes, but it proved an impossible task due mainly to trees, uncooperative farmers, etc... Be good if we could prod the ABMC into posted these image as well.

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