Lorraine American Cemetery and Memorial is a Second World War American military war grave cemetery, located just outside Saint-Avold, Moselle. The cemetery, containing 10,489 American war dead (the second largest number of American burials in Europe, after the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery of World War I dead, with 14,246), covers 113.5 acres (45.9 ha), was dedicated in 1960. It is administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission.
During and shortly after the war over 16,000 American casualties were interred across the Saint Avold region in France. Those interred at the Lorraine American Cemetery died mostly in the autumn of 1944 during the Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine as the Americans sought to expel the Germans from fortress city of Metz and advance on the Siegfried Line during the latter stages of World War II. They were mainly part of the U.S. Third and Seventh Armies.
In the late 1940s many bodies from the Saint Avold region were repatriated to the US or concentrated at Lorraine.
The cemetery's headstones are arranged in nine plots forming an elliptical design ending with an overlook feature. A memorial has ceramic operations maps with narratives and service flags. Either side of the memorial are Tablets of the Missing commemorating 444 soldiers missing in action (rosettes mark those since recovered and identified).
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).