The Quick & the Dead

Few of the 250,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors and marines who lost their lives in World War II had ever said where they wanted their bodies to lie. Of the combat troops polled on the question early this year by TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod, the great majority hoped that they would be buried near the scene of their last battle, with their comrades-in-arms. But war widows and parents, by & large, do not share these sentiments; by last week, the War Department alone had received nearly 90,000 letters from next of kin who want their soldiers' bodies brought back to the U.S. for reburial.

Congress heeded the expressed views of the quick, who have votes, rather than the imperfectly known wishes of the dead. Assured of passage in the House before Christmas was a bill directing the Secretary of War to return the body of a member of any of the armed forces, on request of the next of kin.

Soon both War & Navy will be addressing letters to families of all overseas casualties, asking what they want done. Present estimates are that at least 70% (some say as high as 95%) will reply, "Please bring him back." The War Department is studying a plan whereby, after an overseas cemetery has been 60% evacuated by request, the other 40% will be evacuated without request. This would almost certainly mean the abandonment of all far-flung World War II cemeteries--from Iwo Jima to Salerno--where U.S. dead have been laid to rest. Incomplete records listed 122,000 buried in the European Theater, 41,000 in the Mediterranean, 29,000 in the Southwest Pacific, 11,000 in Pacific Ocean areas. The cost of exhuming and transshipping all the shattered, canvas-wrapped remains might run to $200 million. The cost in reborn grief is beyond measure.

God's Acres. The question of where to rebury these war dead has stirred up more controversy than whether to bring them back. Congress favored a plan to establish 79 new national cemeteries--at least one in each state--with plots for 5,400,000. Original cost: $123,000,000; annual maintenance: a maximum of $10,000,000.

With this plan, the War Department ran head-on into representatives of private cemetery interests. To the cemetery associations, the plan was a tax-consuming monster, violating the "American tradition" under which, they said, the soldier preferred to lie among members of his own family, in a graveyard in his own community, in ground consecrated according to the rites of his creed. The cemetery associations wanted Congress to allot families a set sum for private burials. Private cemeteries, they claimed, have enough vacant plots for 200 years.

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