Grave controversy at America’s military burial site
It’s a sacred place where America buries thousands who served, but recently Arlington cemetery has sparked uproar after the remains of soldiers were found in the wrong graves. Sarah Smith reports.
Just outside the capital, Washington DC, two US Presidents are buried alongside thousands of US soldiers, many of whom served in wars past and present.
Arlington National Cemetery has more than four million visitors annually and holds the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier – a special place in military tradition which honours those killed in combat who could not be identified.
There is an important difference between them and veterans who have simply been buried in the wrong place, yet here families of the fallen have recently discovered they may have been visiting the wrong grave site for years.
Empty grave
The mystery began a few months ago when it was first discovered that one grave site was completely empty.
The neighbouring one did contain a body but not one that that matched the name on headstone and the next plot has two sets of remains in it – only one of which was correctly marked.
Since then an army investigation revealed more than 200 unmarked or misplaced graves, but there may be many more.
Joe Davis, spokesman for Veterans of Foreign Wars, told Channel 4 News that the US military had admitted it was unclear how many graves were incorrect.
“If you are family member and have your family member buried in one of the problem sections, there is always going to be that element of doubt,” he said.
“That’s the problem with the entire investigation. It only came out with 211 unmarked or improperly marked grave sites. But even the army themselves admit they don’t know how many grave sites.”
There was further scandal when a reporter found headstones from Arlington graves dumped in a nearby river. At the time a cemetery spokeswoman told The Washington Post it was unclear how the stones got there or who they belonged to. “They appear to be decades old”, she said.
Ashes dumped
The reputation of the cemetery, which holds 330,000 graves, has been further tarnished by most recent discovery of eight urns full of unidentified ashes all dumped in one unmarked grave.
The story has touched a raw nerve in America because so many of the war dead who are returned from Afghanistan and Iraq are laid to rest in Arlington – and bereaved families want to know their loved ones are treated with respect.
No one from Arlington National Cemetery was prepared to speak to Channel 4 News about the scandal – but they did say they have launched a criminal investigation into how the urns ended up in the same unmarked grave.
The truth it seems is that no one here actually knows how or why this happened.
One cemetery superintedent has been fired and the management now insist that all new burial plots are very carefully and properly identified. Just how many were wrongly marked in the past we will probably never know.