The cemetery was created in November 1944 under the leadership of Joseph Shomon of the 611th Graves Registration Company, as the Ninth United States Army pushed into the Netherlands from France and Belgium. American casualties from the area, and also those that fell in Germany were buried here. Within six months more than 10,000 American casualties were interred at the cemetery. In the late 1940s the Americans started exhuming, repatriating and reburying fallen US service personnel from across the Netherlands. Over half the American dead were repatriated to the US with the rest re-interred in the expanded Margraten cemetery. Nearly all US personnel were concentrated at the cemetery with the exception of some burials at Zoetermeer, Loosdrecht and Opijnen. Over 3,000 German that had been buried in a field adjacent to the American one were reburied at Ysselsteyn German war cemetery. Russian soldiers were moved to Amersfoort. Additionally, a thousand Commonwealth soldiers, mainly British and Canadian, were also moved to cemeteries elsewhere post war. The cemetery was dedicated in 1960 and officially opened by Queen Juliana of the Netherlands.
Architecture and layout
The cemetery covers and from the entrance there is Court of Honor with a reflecting pool. There is a visitors' building and a museum with three engraved operations maps designed by Yale University graduate Lewis York and executed by the Dura Company of Heerlen, Holland, describing the movements of the American forces in the area during World War II. At the base of the chapel tower, facing the reflecting pool, is a statue by Joseph Kiselewski representing the grieving mother for her lost son. The walls on either side of the Court of Honor contain the Tablets of the Missing on which are recorded the names of 1,722 American missing service personnel; rosettes placed to a name denote that the person has since being identified. Beyond the chapel and tower is the burial area which is divided into sixteen plots. 8,291 American dead, most of whom fell close to the cemetery, are interred in the cemetery with headstones set in long curves.
Annual commemorations
Each year on the Dutch Memorial Day commemorations take place in the cemetery. In 2005, President George W. Bush became the first American president to visit the cemetery. The following quote is from a speech President Bush gave that day:
