2015 Cambridge Business & Economics Conference
ISBN : 9780974211428
Commemoration And Poppies: Cambridge And Other American Battle Monuments
Commission Cemeteries’ Mission In Anniversary Years
Nina M. Ray, Professor of Marketing and International Business, Boise State University, Boise
Idaho USA. nray@boisestate.edu. 208-426-3837
Andy T. Mink, Board of Directors, National Council for History Education, at the time of this
research, Director of LEARN NC, a program of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
School of Education. andrew.t.mink@gmail.com
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Commemoration And Poppies: Cambridge And Other American Battle Monuments
Commission Cemeteries’ Mission In Anniversary Years
Nina M. Ray and Andrew T. Mink
ABSTRACT
This paper explains the strategic marketing and educational challenges of the American Battle
Monuments Commission in this era of major commemorative anniversaries. As the conference
is taking place in Cambridge, the Cambridge ABMC World War II site will be emphasized
detailing such unique marketing aspects as it is the only ABMC which is a stop on site a hop-onhop-off city tour. The field project with American history teachers at Meuse-Argonne American
Cemetery, a World War I site, will be presented to demonstrate implementation of the public
policy of ABMC. Specific important symbols (e.g., poppies) and cultural concepts (such as
memory and home) are discussed to highlight implementation of commemorative war
anniversaries.
INTRODUCTION
Around the beginning of August 2014, the grassy moat around the Tower of London became a
field of red ceramic poppies. As Remembrance Day (Veterans Day, in the United States) on
November 11 approached, millions travelled from all over the London area, the country, and
indeed the world, to view'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red.'This display became so popular
that the Mayor of London, as well as the leaders of the three major political parties and many
average citizens, petitioned for the display to remain in place even after Remembrance Day.
While Remembrance Day is commemorated every year, 2014 takes on heightened importance as
the year is the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War One, after which the poppy
became such an important symbol of the fallen of war. While the United States did not enter the
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war until later, the American Battle Monuments Commission, who overseas U.S. cemeteries on
foreign soil, is already preparing for 2018, the centenary of the end of the Great War.
2014 was also the year when the 70th anniversary of D-Day was commemorated. Anniversaries
matter, especially for the American Battle Monuments Commission. So, while the 11th of
November commemorates the end of World War One, the Cambridge ABMC cemetery (a World
War II cemetery) used ceremonies on that day to honor both the 70th D-Day anniversary and the
centenary of World War in Europe.
One of the authors of this article was in London for many of the World War centenary events.
Many conversations with taxi drivers, British Legion poppy sellers, etc. surprised her as several
made comments such as “you don’t sell poppies in America?” “I lived in America for a while
and didn’t see any.” Explaining that the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) do “sell” small
poppies at some high-traffic locations in many American cities did not convince the people in
Britain engaged in such conversations with the author. In fact, one was amazed that the
Americans have the term, “Veterans of Foreign Wars,” as the two world wars are not considered
“foreign” in Britain.This same London visitor once thanked a British former serviceman “for his
service.” He seemed surprised. Others later said no one would do that “here.” And that “you
Americans do a better job of honoring your vets.”In the annual ceremony at the American Battle
Monuments Commission cemetery in Cambridge that Veterans Day, speakers from both sides of
the Atlantic paid tribute, but both commented on how the British are more inclined to emphasize
the fallen while the Americans emphasize current military and veterans for November 11. Both
sides agreed that both commemorations are obviously important and by bringing the two cultures
together for November 11 ceremonies, appropriate tributes result. The Cambridge ABMC site
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had recently opened a new visitor center, with highly interactive displays explaining World War
II (Cambridge American Cemetery is a WWII cemetery) and the men and women who fought in
it and are buried at Cambridge. A major part of the exhibit encourages visitors to “continue the
experience at home,” referring them to abmc.gov. Travel to the final resting home of the soldiers
is important, but so is continuing the experience and expanding on the memory in one’s modern
day home. ABMC is attempting both and is in the process of combining marketing with public
policy and civic responsibility to achieve its mission. All of this is in the context of the severe
“marketing” challenges, mainly the policy to not all allow any commercial activity on sites, not
even gift shops. However, the Cambridge site has done something no other ABMC site has yet
to achieve, becoming a stop on a major “hop-on-hop-off” city tour.
This paper explores some of the symbols associated with the memory of the fallen, especially in
regard to recent efforts of ABMC Cambridge. Also included is a discussion of one ABMC
public policy effort to keep memory and passed on to future generations in the United States.
MARKETERS AND TEACHERS: KEEPING THE MEMORY ALIVE
Relevant bodies of literature which form the background for this paper are in the field of
marketing, specifically roots/ancestral tourism, thanatourism (or “dark” tourism) and its specific
subsegment of battlefield tourism (see Clarke and Eastgate, 2011 and Clarke and McAuley,
2013), as well as K-12i curriculum development and teacher support.Some already have
emphasized the link between the fields. During the past November on UK television,
Ancestry.com repeated the tag line “Discover your story by remembering theirs.” They showed
a WWI soldier in uniform fighting what appears to be Post Traumatic Shock. In another
advertisement, Ancestry told interested potential users, “This Remembrance Day get free access
to all military records.”
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The two authors of this paper (one a Marketing Professor, one an Education professor) met
through separate projects involving American Battle Monuments Commission. Since 1947,
ABMC has served to oversee American memorials and cemeteries around the world. The
informal mission in the past, as discussed below, has been “keeping the grass green and the
headstones white.”
Recently, ABMC has opened new visitor centers at Point-du-Hoc, France and Cambridge,
England. In time for this, a new app was created. According to the company, NewCity, which
created the ABMC app (American Battle Monuments Commission: Stories of the Ultimate
Sacrifice, 2014)
ABMC has been flying under the radar for some time. Their primary mission was
keeping the memorials in pristine condition and welcoming visitors, particularly the
friends and family of the fallen. While “Keep the grass green and the headstones white”
has been an operating principle for a long time . . . the leadership of ABMC decided it
was time to take on a more powerful storytelling role.
Projects reported here focused specifically on the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery near
Verdun, France and the Cambridge American Cemetery in England. This World War I MeuseArgonne cemetery contains the most fallen of any U.S. cemetery in Europe. In 2013, ABMC
provided funding for a team of scholars and in-service K-12 educators to design open
educational resources that aimed to leverage the physical, geographic, cultural, and historical
view of the ABMC and surrounding areas in order tounderscore the importance of WWI in US
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history curricula. This project endeavor included firsthand experience at the Meuse-Argonne site
in France in July 2014.
The teaching and learning landscape of any subject is complex and challenging to navigate.
Today, teachers are expected to be “increasingly effective in enabling a diverse group of students
to learn ever more complex material and to develop a wider range of skills” (Bransford, DarlingHammond, & LePage, 2005, p. 2).
A vital challenge facing teachers in 21st century classrooms
is to design instruction and build pathways to academic growth that require more than the
memorization of content and the retrieval of the given information for the next unit test. Rather
there is a need to engage students in “Authentic Intellectual Work” (Newman, King, &
Carmichael, 2007) that is integrative (interdisciplinary), value-based, challenging, and active in
order to facilitate higher level thinking, creativity, communicative competencies, interpretation,
and in-depth understanding (See NCSS 2008). This approach to teaching and learning is founded
upon a cognitive understanding of learning that shifts from seeing students as passive receivers
of information toward recognizing learning as an active process in which learners are provided
with room to actively process, connect, and relate information to their prior knowledge and
situational, verbal and social contexts. Within the field of humanities, a key learning outcome of
such work is the development of not just deep content knowledge and 21st literacy skills but the
development of (1) a disposition to produce the best possible arguments for whatever stories we
tell, (2) an acceptance that we may be obliged to tell different stories from the ones we would
prefer to tell (3) a recognition of the importance of according people in the past the same respect
as we would want for ourselves.
A central concept in successfully meeting these ambitious goals is an acknowledgement of
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symbols such as the poppy, the importance of home, memory, and commemoration as a
historical reference point. In partnership with ABMC, an assembled team of scholars, educators,
and technicians explored the depth and impact of these concepts through an immersive research
and curriculum development program at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery near Verdun,
France. More than stale dates and facts, this ABMClandscapeprovided a nexus for these
concepts within the power of place: the place where battles were fought, the place where our
soldiers sacrificed their lives, the memorials of and at that place, and later, the place of
pilgrimage and remembrance.
How we remember our past is reinforced by monuments, gravestones, landscapes, and
commemorative ceremonies – and eventually by curricula, textbooks, and the daily choices of
schools and teachers on what should and can be taught. As such, the ABMCs mission helps
create our public memory of WWI, especially the ultimate sacrifice paid by so many of our
soldiers. Our work with educators in a “first among equals” approachfocused on select
memorials, burial sites, individuals, and battles to study in order to disseminate World War I
history to the next generation. Specifically, a series of physical and commemorative lenses were
utilized, including (but not limited to):

Chapels: Each cemetery contains space for relatives to mourn and remember their dead.
These beautiful chapels include powerful symbols of the war and the final sacrifice that
many of our troops made.

Memorials:Often memorials contain symbology that feature the figures of "Justice,"
Liberty," and "Truth." This powerful imagery gives students and teachers a window into
the meaning behind these monuments.
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
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Maps and Place:ABMC cemeteries contain maps, often beautifully designed out of
mosaics, which support the mission to introduce teachers and their students to the power
of geography and the crucial placement of the associated WWI battles and, in the end, the
placement of the cemetery.

Statues of Youth:Often cemeteries contain powerful images of "youth," most often young
men sculpted in bronze. This theme of youth is a critical hook as classroom resources for
American classroomswere built.
MEMORY AND COMMEMORATION: ONE GREAT WAR SOLDIER’S STORY AS
EXPERIENCED BY A 2014 DESCENDANT
Within this initiative, research projects identified and focused on the key themeof memory with
particular poignancy and meaning. The following project serves as a good example.
Military service is nothing new to the Gulledge family, and their sacrifice is nonetheless because
most of them survived to return to their homes. This environment allowed for the sharing of
stories and the creation of family memory, which oftentimes has little to do with a memorization
of facts and events and more to do with a reflective nature of cataloging grief, relief, and awe.
Suzanne Gulledge remembers her grandfather talking about his experience in World War I in
only one way – through the politely deflective story that the only way he survived the MeuseArgonne campaign was to learn a single French phrase: “Madame, pouvez-vous épargner une
pomme de terre?” This story allowed him to re-integrate into his family and embrace his home
without digging through the deep trenches of his experience. A funny, poignant reminder that he
returned home because of luck, kindness of strangers, and not a few potatoes for dinner.
Katie’s research tracked her ancestor’s path across the Atlantic and to the contested landscape
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of the Great War. As she worked across the same French terrain, the team discussed the concept
of home and its role in surviving the brutality of war. Home was a rabbit’s foot, something to
rub and squeeze when looking for motivation to survive the day. Home was the open field on the
side of a road somewhere in France, your brothers-by-draft eating and sleeping with you. Home
was the place you protected, under-armed Frenchmen against metal opponents. Home is the
place you remain decades later, still tilling the same ground to separate the unexploded
ordinance from the onions and beets.
The group stood in the farmer’s home and listened to the translated stories of post-war village
life. His evidence was the dozens of shoeboxes overflowing with shell casings and war detritus.
Then Katie shared the story of her grandfather, and she repeated the same phrase that had
echoed through her family history and home for several generations: “Monsieur, pouvez-vous
épargner une pomme de terre?” Without missing a beat, he turned over the ground and dug up
a small white potato. He handed it to Katie with earnest kindness, probably much as his town’s
ancestors had done for her great-grandfather. He explained that the French are still grateful
and indebted to the Americans for coming to protect their home.
CONCLUSIONS
Governments and cultures are concerned with remembering important events and those who died
protecting the way of life of that society. Major anniversaries can serve as catalysts to
commemorate and ponder how the knowledge of these events can be passed on to the next
generation in meaningful ways. This paper discussed how the American Battle Monuments
Commission, who is responsible for the U.S. overseas military cemeteries, “keeps the grass
green and the headstones white,” but also works to engage future generations. Principles from
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fields of marketing and education are presented with the intent that successful accomplishing of
the agency’s public service will need expertise from both fields.
REFERENCES
American Battle Monuments Commission. (2014) Stories of the Ultimate Sacrifice. Available at:
https://www.insidenewcity.com/work/view/american-battle-monuments-commission
Bransford, J. D., Darling-Hammond, L., & LePage, P. (2005). Introduction. In L. DarlingHammond & J. D. Bransford (Eds.), Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What
Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do (pp. 1-39). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass
Clarke P. and Eastgate A. (2011) Cultural Capital, Life Course Perspectives and Western Front
battlefield tours. Journals of Tourism and Cultural Change 9(1): 31-44.
Clarke P. and McAuley A. (2013) The Fromelles Interment 2010: dominant narrative and
reflexive thanatourism. Current Issues in Tourism. Available at: DOI:
10.1080/13683500.2013.823918
National Council for the Social Studies. (2008). A vision of powerful teaching and learning in
the social studies: Building social understanding and civic efficacy. Washington, DC:
Author. http://www.socialstudies.org/positions/powerful.
Newmann, F., King, B, & Carmichael, D. (2007). Authentic Instruction and Assessment:
Common Standards for Rigor and Relevance in Teaching Academic Subjects. Des
Moines, Iowa: Iowa Department of Education.
i
K-12, a term used in education and educational technology in the United States, Canada, and
possibly other countries, is a short form for the publicly-supported school grades prior to college.
These grades are kindergarten (K) and the 1st through the 12th grade (1-12).” Definition from
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/K-12
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