The ground on which Normandy Cemetery is situated was once a temporary cemetery, one of the 37 temporary cemeteries that were scattered throughout Europe until 1947. In that year, my father (Howard L. Peckham) was appointed the job of returning the war dead of the European Theater to the United States. He sent home more than 80,000 of those fallen heroes.
About 60,000 were re-buried in one of the ten permanent U.S. military cemeteries in Europe, which were graded and constructed by his command. The temporary cemetery in Normandy came into existence only a couple of days after D-Day. Its name was St. Laurent, or, to be more precise, St. Laurent Sur Mer. It became one of the 10 permanent U.S. military cemeteries. It was later called Normandy American Cemetery.
Constructing the Normandy cemetery was far from easy. AGRC engineers had copies of the layout in their hands so they could make detailed plans for grading and construction. After those plans were completed, a contracting firm was selected from among the French firms that had been invited to present bids. However, the successful bidder could not begin work until right of entry from the French Government was received, however, and that took longer than expected.
Geography also caused a delay. Grading and construction began in June 1948, but because of St. Laurent’s proximity to the English Channel, that work was extremely hard. “AGRC engineers often had to trudge through thick mud, and workmen frequently had to move their heavy equipment along in clay-like soil,” my father explained to Mother and me later. He sounded sympathetic, probably because he had spent twenty years in the Corps of Engineers, where walking in muddy terrain was a common occurrence on his inspection trips.
Below is a paragraph, plus footnotes, from Final Disposition of World War II Dead: 1945-1951. It provides further details about the information I have written in this post. It also appears in Dad’s biography, A Salute to Patriotism: The Life and Work of Major General Howard L. Peckham. A Kindle version of the book can be found at this link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B6EIUNI/
In spite of the delays, my father was pleased that grading and construction of the permanent cemetery (still called St. Laurent at that time) ended early in November 1948. Considering its D-Day significance, the results were well worth the painstaking efforts made by AGRC personnel.
[Note: Clergymen assigned to AGRC-EA performed benediction ceremonies at St. Laurent and other temporary American cemeteries when they were closed. During the construction phases, the deceased soldiers who were to be reinterred were placed in temporary storage facilities.]
Great articole!!