At a Staten Island pier last week the American Graves Registration Service began loading 6,200 new, bronzed-steel coffins aboard a Liberty ship, bound for the battlegrounds of Europe. It was the small beginning of a vast and Stygian job: the return of an estimated 80% of the nation's 251,000 identified war dead, who now lie in cemeteries scattered across four continents, but whose next-of-kin have asked that they be disinterred and brought home for reburial. Estimated undertakers' fees: $30,000,000.
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