Brookwood American Cemetery and Memorial
| Brookwood American Cemetery and Memorial | |
|---|---|
| American Battle Monuments Commission | |
Memorial chapel and headstones
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| Used for those deceased 1918 | |
| Established | 1918 |
| Location | near Brookwood, Surrey |
| Designed by | Egerton Swartwout and H.B. Cresswell |
| Total burials | 468 plus 563 commemorated |
| Unknown burials | 41 |
| Burials by nation | |
| Burials by war | |
| Statistics source: ABMC Brookwood web page | |
Brookwood American Cemetery and Memorial is the only American Military Cemetery of World War I in the British Isles. Located approximately 28 miles (45 km) southwest of London, Brookwood American Cemetery contains the graves of 468 American war dead, including the graves of 41 unknown servicemen, from World War I.
Maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission, the cemetery of 4.5 acres (1.8 ha) lies to the west of the civilian Brookwood Cemetery, built by the London Necropolis Company and opened in 1854. The American cemetery is flanked by the much larger Brookwood Military Cemetery, maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which contains more than 5,000 war dead from the two world wars.
In 1929 the chapel memorial opened. Inside are the engraved names of 563 missing, most of whom served in the United States Navy and Coast Guard, whose graves are in the sea. Most of the dead buried in Brookwood died in Great Britain or its surrounding waters. During World War I, servicemen who died in London hospitals were brought to Brookwood. After the Armistice in 1918, the dead from various temporary sites throughout England, Scotland and Ireland were brought to it. These were members of the American Expeditionary Forces who lost their lives in England or the surrounding waters. Among those reburied in Brookwood American Cemetery were victims of the German U-boat UB-77 attack on the SS Tuscania, a British troop transport of the Anchor Line, sunk on 5 February 1918 off the coast of Scotland with the loss of 210 souls. Also most of the 358 American victims of the HMS Otranto tragedy were reinterred in Brookwood.
After the entry of the United States into the Second World War the American cemetery was enlarged, with burials of US servicemen beginning in April 1942. With large numbers of American personnel based in the west of England, a dedicated rail service for the transport of bodies operated from Devonport to Brookwood. By August 1944 over 3,600 bodies had been buried in the American Military Cemetery. At this time burials were discontinued, and US casualties were from then on buried at Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial.
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