You can now find the stories of ALL the World War II fallen buried in the center sections of Arlington National Cemetery.
There are eight sections in the central part of Arlington National Cemetery from the John F. Kennedy Gravesite down to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier that include 113 WWII fallen. People can now read a story about each of them via the Find A Grave and/or Together We Serve smartphone apps. You can see a video of how it works with Army Major Albert W. Hawkes, M.D. in Section 2 here and AAF nurse 2nd Lieutenant Ruth M. Gardner in Section 21 here.
This is the first time in the history of Arlington National Cemetery that the general public has everything needed to identify details about all of the WWII fallen in this part of the cemetery. This was made possible by countless hours of volunteer researchers and writers working under the direction of Section Director Karen Marquart from Missouri.
Karen started out with a spreadsheet of 496 names we got from Arlington National Cemetery and Find A Grave. This was barebones information with names and a few dates. Step 1 was to take out the 383 names that were not in WWII service (family members or those who served before WWII). Her team of 11 research volunteers scanned the internet to find additional details so we now have an easy-to-access record that includes service number, unit or ship, and photo (where available).
Next her team of 18 volunteer writers wrote stories of these 113 WWII fallen. You can find these and all the other ANC stories on Fold3 here.
You can see our current list of Arlington volunteer writers and database researchers here.
These are 74 names from Section 2, 12 names from Section 9, 6 names from Section 21, 1 name from Section 32, 1 name from Section 35, 7 names from Section 37, 1 name from Section 45, and 12 names from Section 46.
The database of these records will be combined with those of the other sections of ANC. This will be the most accurate list of WWII fallen buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
A copy of this section of the database is available upon request. don@storiesbehindthestars.org.