The American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) is a small independent agency of the United States government. Established by Congress in 1923, it is responsible for:
- Commemorating the services of the U.S. armed forces where they have served since April 6, 1917 (the date of U.S. entry into World War I)
- Establishing suitable memorial shrines; designing, constructing, operating, and maintaining permanent American military burial grounds in foreign countries
- Controlling the design and construction of U.S. military monuments and markers in foreign countries by other U.S. citizens and organizations, both public and private
- Encouraging the maintenance of such monuments and markers by their sponsors
The Commission administers, operates, and maintains 24 permanent American burial grounds on foreign soil. As of May 2006, there are 124,917 U.S. war dead interred at these cemeteries: 30,921 of World War I, 93,246 of World War II and 750 of the Mexican-American War. An additional 6,033 American veterans and others are interred in the Mexico City National Cemetery and Corozal American Cemetery and Memorial.
Read more about American Battle Monuments Commission: Complete Sortable List of ABMC Cemeteries, Complete Sortable List of ABMC Monuments, Members
Famous quotes containing the words american, battle, monuments and/or commission:
“What we do is as American as lynch mobs. America has always been a complex place.”
—Jerry Garcia (1942–1995)
“All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good battle is objective and honest—never vicious or cruel. Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principle of equal partnership.”
—Ann Landers (b. 1918)
“If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“Children cannot eat rhetoric and they cannot be sheltered by commissions. I don’t want to see another commission that studies the needs of kids. We need to help them.”
—Marian Wright Edelman (b. 1939)