The accounts of the day said that an “awesome silence” so unnatural to Manhattan fell over the waterfront after the big guns of the battleship Missouri fired off blank charges from the Hudson River in tribute to the returning war dead.
The silence then greeted the U.S. Army Transport ship Joseph V. Connolly as she sailed up the Narrows past the Statue of Liberty and eased into the berth at Pier 21 off W. 21st on Manhattan’s West Side on Oct. 26, 1947.
The converted Liberty ship carried a cargo of 6,248 caskets bearing the remains of troops from the European theater of World War II, including many who fell in the Battle of the Bulge.
The Connolly was the first ship to arrive in the states under the “Return of the Dead” program of the American Graves Registration Service, which conducted the largest search and recovery effort of war dead ever attempted between 1945 and 1951, resulting in the identification of more than 280,000 fallen Americans.
As a band played Chopin’s funeral march, a casket from the Connolly chosen at random was lowered onto a caisson which was escorted, to muffled drum beats, by 6,000 marchers from the military services up Fifth Avenue and then to the Sheep Meadow in Central Park, where dignitaries and military chaplains made remarks.
A crowd estimated at 400,000 turned out to mark the passage of the caisson. The mood stood in stark contrast to the boisterous, ticker tape parades that preceded the arrival of the Connolly for troops returning in victory from Europe and the Pacific.
The flag-draped casket on the caisson demanded respect and sorrow, but one of the only breaks in the crowd’s silence was completely understandable, the New York Times reported.
Along Fifth Ave., a distraught woman shouted, “Johnny, my Johnny, where is my boy?” The woman followed the parade to Central Park, the Times reported, and again shouted, “Johnny, where is my boy?”
The ceremonies in Central Park ended with a benediction from Navy Capt. Frank Hamilton, the Protestant chaplain for the Third Naval District.
“Almighty God, our Father, before Thee is a chosen child of the American people, chosen in death, to represent all our children,” Hamilton stated.
All 6,248 caskets aboard the Connolly arrived in New York with the approval of next of kin who signed “Quartermaster’s General Form 345” on the final disposition of the remains.
The form cautioned that “the next of kin should familiarize himself with the contents of the pamphlet ‘Disposition of World War II Armed Forces Dead’ before filling out this form.”
Then came the choice: the next of kin could choose for the remains “to be interred on a permanent American military cemetery overseas,” Form 345 said, or “be returned to the United States.”
If the U.S. was the choice, the government would deliver the remains to the nearest train station or to the home of the next of kin by military hearse. In addition, the government would pay up to $600 for a private funeral.
In all, a total of more than 171,000 remains were returned to the U.S., while the fallen’s next of kin chose to have more than 110,000 deceased remain overseas to eventually be interred at one of the 26 military cemeteries magnificently maintained worldwide by the American Battle Monuments Commission.
In statements after the war, President Harry S. Truman said he had been urged by unnamed allied countries to allow for the burial of American war dead in their cemeteries — if the families agreed — to honor permanently the troops who liberated their countries.
In a May 13, 1947, statement “Concerning Final Burial of the Dead of World War II,” Truman sought to ease the concerns of the families that their loved ones might not be treated with respect overseas.
“I feel sure, however, that if they could see for themselves the care which is devoted to the graves of those who died in the First World War, and to the temporary cemeteries in which their own dead lie buried today, many of the next of kin would prefer that their loved ones should rest forever in the countries where they fell,” Truman said.
“I believe, therefore, that our government should make possible a pilgrimage to the permanent cemeteries overseas” for the families “to give reassurance of the perpetual care which our country will devote to the resting places of our honored dead.”
The proposal, however, was deemed too expensive and was never implemented.
One of the overseas cemeteries is located near the Dutch town of Margraten, whose citizens have adopted the graves of each of the 8,200-plus American troops buried at the nearby Netherlands American Cemetery.
Operation Market Garden, which was fought across the Nazi-occupied Netherlands and marked the largest airborne operation of World War II, began on Sept. 17, 1944, about 60 miles northwest of Margraten.
Since 1945, ceremonies have been held at the cemetery on the Sunday before Memorial Day. The tradition began when Dutch teenager Frieda van Schaik wrote a letter to the U.S. military pleading for the remains of American soldiers to stay at the cemetery.
She and other citizens of Margraten made a promise to American military families.
“Leave your boys with us,” Schaik wrote. “We will watch over them like our own, forever.”
