Graves Registration Service: U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps in Europe (World War I)

Cover, The California Nugget, vol VII, issue I, Spring 2015.

A lesser-known, yet very significant aspect of American military history from World War One involves the Graves Registration Service, U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps in Europe.

For my complete article, please click on this link: Graves Registration Service: U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps in Europe

My motivation to research the GRS was actually to learn this chapter of my grandfather’s service, then-Lieutenant Glenn A. Ross, who was a combat veteran of the First Division and Second Division during World War One, and who following the war was assigned to foreign service with the GRS in France.

I wanted to learn how the GRS responded to the challenge of caring properly for the Fallen on such a colossal scale; how, simultaneously, such solemn landscape and architectural grandeur was achieved in so many locations and from such a long distance from the U.S.; and all the while contending with overwhelming logistical challenges of all sorts, then finally, turning over operations to the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Graves Registration Service: U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps in EuropeThe article weaves the stories about the GRS and my grandfather’s contributions.  I wrote the article as a contribution to the “California Ancestors in World War I” series appearing in The California Nugget, the bi-annual journal of The California Genealogical Society.  

For my complete article, please click on this link: Graves Registration Service: U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps in Europe

(Reproduced with permission from The California Nugget, Volume VII, Issue I, Spring 2015.  Copyright © 2015 by the California Genealogical Society.  All rights reserved.)

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Thank you!    David Goerss

Posted in WWI