Today’s post was written by Rachael Salyer, archivist in the Textual Reference Branch at the National Archives at College Park, MD.
June 6, 2024 marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the start of the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II. Operation Neptune, the codename for the Normandy landings, included Allied assaults on five beaches: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Of these, American forces were responsible for the invasions at Utah and Omaha. According to the Department of Defense D-Day Fact Sheet, approximately 73,000 American service members participated in these assaults. Utah Beach was assigned to the U.S. 1st Army, 7th Corps, which experienced the fewest losses with only 197 deaths. The U.S. 1st Army, 5th Corps was responsible for taking Omaha Beach, and they were supported by sea transport from the U.S. Navy. The Omaha Beach assaults resulted in 2,400 American casualties. The National World War II Museum Fact Sheet on the D-Day Invasion at Normandy – June 6, 1944 lists the total number of American service members who were killed, wounded, missing, or captured as 8,230. Those numbers continued to rise as the Allied invasion continued in the following weeks.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has custody of numerous Records Relating to D-Day planning, operations, and communications. NARA also holds records that document the losses of the Normandy invasion, as well as initial efforts to honor those sacrifices. Among these records are Weekly Burial Reports of the Army’s Graves Registration Service (GRS), which was under the control of the Office of the Quartermaster General. Many of these reports can be found in the series General Correspondence Relating to Organizations, 1939–1954 (entry NM-81 1894-A, NAID 650218) in Record Group 92: Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General. Although the complete series is not available online, many of the Weekly Burial Reports have been digitized and may be viewed in the National Archives Catalog. Records of burials in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) include records of established cemeteries in the United Kingdom, like Brookwood American Cemetery and Cambridge American Cemetery, as well as new, temporary cemeteries established in Europe after D-Day.
The Weekly Burial Reports that cover the Normandy invasion are part of the 1939-1945 section of Entry NM-81 1894-A. Within this section of the series, the records are arranged alphabetically by organization or location and then according to the War Department Decimal File System, which uses decimal 293 for “Funerals, burials, and reports” and decimal 314.6 for “Death and interment records.” The reports do not contain detailed information about individual burials, but they do typically list the service member’s name, service number, rank, organization, date of burial, and cemetery. They also include the names of service members from all branches of the Armed Forces.
The Weekly Burial Reports for St. Laurent Cemetery, which eventually became the Normandy American Cemetery, can also be found among these records. The Quartermaster General publication Final Disposition of World War II Dead, 1945-1951 notes that “[s]ince St. Laurent represented the first temporary American Cemetery established in Europe during World War II, it almost inevitably later became a permanent war memorial. Situated on a bluff overlooking that section of the Allied landing area called ‘Omaha Beach,’ St. Laurent Cemetery came into existence on 7 June 1944, just 24 hours after the first assault on D-Day. The initial burials consisted of Americans who had died on the beaches during the first day of combat. Most of the interments made in St. Laurent occurred during the first 2 or 3 weeks following D-Day, and amounted to over 3,800.”
Some of the service members who were interred in these cemeteries were later repatriated and reinterred in cemeteries in the U.S., and many were reinterred in permanent American military cemeteries in Europe under the direction of the American Battle Monuments Commission (AMBC). Other digitized series documenting such reinterments include records like the Interment Control Forms, 1928 – 1962 (entry A1 2110-B, NAID 5833879), the Applications for Headstones, 1/1/1925 – 6/30/1970 (entry A1 1942-A, A1 2110-C, NAID 596118) in Record Group 92; and the Headstone Inscription and Interment Records for U.S. Military Cemeteries on Foreign Soil, 1942–1949 (entry A1 43, NAID 7408555) in Record Group 117: Records of the American Battle Monuments Commission. The Weekly Burial Reports, though, help tell the story of the immediate aftermath of D-Day as losses were just beginning to be counted.
For more information about the series General Correspondence Relating to Organizations, 1939–1954 (entry NM-81 1894-A, NAID 650218) in Record Group 92, please email the Textual Reference Branch at the National Archives in College Park, MD (Archives II) at archives2reference@nara.gov.
For additional NARA resources related to D-Day and World War II, please see:
- D-Day | National Archives
- World War II Records | National Archives
- World War II: D-Day, The Invasion of Normandy | Eisenhower Presidential Library
- FACT SHEET: Normandy Landings | whitehouse.gov
If you are researching the death of a specific service member, you may wish to request a copy of their Individual Deceased Personnel File (IDPF, also known as Mortuary or Casualty Files). Some IDPFs (e.g., from NAID 297287480) have already been digitized and may be viewed online in the Catalog.
Finally, to learn more about other records in NARA’s custody that relate to military deaths in World War II, please see the finding aid Reference Information Paper (RIP) 82: Records Relating to Personal Participation in World War II: American Military Casualties and Burials.
This is the second in a series of blogs commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Allied invasions at Normandy.
*All photographs are from the file unit France – Normandy Invasion: Omaha and Utah Beaches in the series U.S. Army Signal Corps Photographs Of Military Activity During World War II and The Korean Conflict, 1941–1954. Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. Record Group 111: Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer. National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.
**All document images are from the series General Correspondence Relating to Organizations, 1939–1954 (entry NM-81 1894-A). Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Quartermaster General. Record Group 92: Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General. National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.
