Volunteers Put Faces to Names of Americans in WWII Cemetery

Historian Sebastiaan Vonk, second right, and American Ambassador Peter Hoekstra, third from right, lay a wreath at the graves of eight members of the crew of an American B17 bomber shot down over the Netherlands on July 30, 1943, in the tiny rural village of Opijnen, Netherlands, on May 4, 2020. Peter Dejong/AP Photo

OPIJNEN, Netherlands—Staff Sgt. Maurice Gosney was just a name carved on a white cross until a young Dutch historian went in search of the fallen American soldier’s face.

Killed in an ambush near the German village of Sulzfeld on April 11, 1945, Gosney is one of more than 10,000 American servicemen and women buried or memorialized at the Netherlands American Cemetery in the southern Netherlands town of Margraten.