History of the U.S. Army Graves Registration Service (1917-1950s)

A review of the activities and beginnings of the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps Graves Registration Service is presented to broaden existing knowledge of how the remains of military casualties were processed and identified. The focus is on the activities of this service in France after World War I. The processing and other problems faced by this organization are often identical to those experienced by the forensic pathologists or other medicolegal investigators who are confronted with remains of an unidentified person.