Casualties Of War – Far From Home
When U.S. servicemen and women are killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, their remains are often brought home within days. But it hasn't always been that way.
CBS News correspondent Richard Roth reports that many lie today in cemeteries all over Europe – including hundreds who fell in World War I and were buried in Belgium's Flanders Field.
In Flanders Field, between the crosses row on row – it's not poppies today, but roses that mark the places of the dead.
Belgian schoolchildren have been doing this for generations – learning the Star Spangled Banner and singing it each Memorial Day in a gesture of gratitude to America and the American soldiers buried here.
They died in an age when an American general could say that all that America asked for its sacrifice was enough foreign soil in which to bury its dead.
Beyond the beaches of Normandy in France, it's a sacrifice measured by the acre.
There've been more than 120,000 American soldiers killed who never came home – but just a handful are buried in this tiny corner of Belgium, in America's smallest cemetery in Europe.
And yet every May, there's a ritual of tribute and tradition.
Chris Sims has been choreographing it for more than 30 years – not just to honor the dead.
"It does serve a purpose," Sims says. "It has to show the younger generations that what happened should never happen again and yet, it always does – the history returns."
History here was captured in a poem, early in the first World War.
Katie Juza of the Antwerp International School recites it: "We are the dead. Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved, and were loved. And now we lie in Flanders Fields."
Three hundred and sixty eight Americans still lie here, on the battlefield where they fell almost 90 years ago. Alex Henley from Oregon is here and Wendell Ross from Minnesota. And New Yorkers Frank Brindza and Arthur Struck. Robert Porcelli is still here too – an Army bugler, from North Carolina.
It's said the soldiers buried here still serve their country: perpetual symbols of America's willingness to sacrifice.