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Article: Cemeteries, Military
- Article from:
- Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Cemeteries, Military
After 174 years, twenty-eight American Revolutionary War soldiers were returned in aluminum coffins by Canada for burial in the United States in 1988. A dozen years later, the United States was annually spending $6 million to locate and retrieve the remains of fewer than 2,000 American MIAs from
Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery stand guards twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.
Across America and the world stretch the graves of approximately 1.1 million Americans killed in the line of military service. The federal government maintains 119 national cemeteries in the United States and twenty-four others in a ...