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Memorial Day 2021

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press release

ARLINGTON, Va. (May. 18, 2021) – Memorial Day ceremonies at all American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) sites will be closed to the general public in order to ensure the health and safety of our staff and visitors.

Unknown Soldier at Epinal American Cemetery

Shortly after the close of the war, Congress passed a bill providing for the entombment of a World War II unknown to join that of unknown from World War I on the Amphitheater plaza at Arlington National Cemetery.

Memorial Day flag image

The American Battle Monuments Commission will honor the fallen this Memorial Day, but due to host-nation COVID-19 guidance and out of an abundance of caution, all ceremonies will be closed to the public.

Manila American Cemetery
ABMC Sites in the World (Infographic 2021)
Download this infographic to see where ABMC sites are located throughout the world.
World War I nurses at an American Red Cross hospital

Buried side by side at Suresnes American Cemetery just outside Paris, lie the Cromwell sisters, who traded in a life of prominence in New York City to be frontline nurses during World War I.

Early morning sun creates shadows for the rows of headstones at Cambridge American Cemetery, June 25, 2014. ABMC photo: Warrick Page

On this day in 1923, President Warren G. Harding signed legislation to establish the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Members of the 369th Harlem Hellfighters infantry division return home to New York from France in February of 1919. Photo via National Archives, originally captured by Western Newspapers Union
Remembering the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment of the 93rd Division, aka the Harlem Hellfighters, as they fought segregation and the Germans in World War I.
Sgt. John T. Puckett, buried in Ardennes American Cemetery