Video

Oise-Aisne American Cemetery

This World War I cemetery in France contains the graves of more than 6,000 war dead and nearly 250 names on the Walls of the Missing, most of whom lost their lives while fighting in this vicinity in 1918 during World War I.

Video Transcript: 

The Oise-Aisne American Cemetery is 70 miles east of Paris.
It's the second largest American World War I military cemetery.
It began as a temporary burial place in the summer of 1918, during the French and American counteroffensive from the Marne River – a turning point of the war.
More than 6,000 fallen Americans are buried here.
The pink sandstone walls of the Romanesque memorial are curved like an amphitheater.
At the center is a large altar made of carved and polished marble.
Above the altar, an American doughboy stands with his rifle.
A chapel stands beside the memorial.
It’s walls bear the names of over 200 missing in action.
Plantings of boxwood hedges and beds of roses are flanked by rows of Oriental plane trees.
Sergeant Joyce Kilmer, a noted American poet, was killed by a German sniper only 800 yards from the cemetery.
Kilmer is remembered for his poem, "Trees."
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms, to pray…