"QUANTICO, Va. — Curator Owen L. Conner carefully unties the ribbon around the weathered slats and removes the storage paper. Sand from the island where the Marines fought still clings to some of the wood. One by one, he assembles the three crosses once used to mark graves. As he does, the faded names appear in black over peeling white paint: Robert W. Hillard; Clarence S. Hodgson; Bernard A. Marble. Fragments of other names can be seen on other pieces, and "Nov . . .1943." The crosses come from lost cemeteries on the World War II battlefield of Tarawa, an atoll in the Pacific where more than 1,000 Marines were killed fighting the Japanese, and where hundreds may still lie buried in unmarked graves. Last month, the National Museum of the Marine Corps officially acquired the crosses, along with other grave artifacts, from History Flight Inc., the Fredericksburg, Va., nonprofit archaeological firm that has been excavating on Tarawa for more than a decade. The Tarawa crosses are rare and are believed to be the only such artifacts in a museum collection. The relics from a bygone war come as the Marines mourn the 11 members killed in the most recent conflict, alongside one soldier and one sailor, in the Aug. 26 suicide bombing attack at the Kabul airport." www.stripes.com/newsletters/military-history/2021-09-18/lost-grave-markers-surface-world-war-II-battlefield-2931100.html
