By Piper Hudspeth Blackburn, CNN
(CNN) — In the winter of 1944, as some of the bloodiest fighting in World War II ramped up in Europe, 19-year-old then-1st Sgt. Jefferson Wiggins, along with hundreds of other Black soldiers, were tasked with burying the dead in the southern Netherlands.
What was once a fruit orchard would become the final resting place for thousands of fallen US service members. It was difficult, gruesome work, done in near-constant rain and snow with only pick axes and shovels. Years later, Wiggins would recall how soldiers under his command in the 960th Quartermaster Service Company cried as they lowered the bodies of men into their graves.
The site, in the village of Margraten located in the southeastern part of the Netherlands, became one of the largest American military cemeteries in Europe. And for months, visitors to the cemetery, which is run by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), haven’t been able to learn about the soldiers’ work.
In March, the small, little-known federal agency took down a display from the cemetery’s visitor center that commemorates the contributions of Black soldiers like Wiggins, who ultimately reached the rank of first lieutenant and died in 2013, and highlights the discrimination they faced. Most Black soldiers were limited to non-combat roles during World War II.
“It’s not a matter of a panel that has my husband’s name on it. That’s not the issue,” Wiggins’ widow, Janice, told CNN. “The issue is that these are a group of men who contributed to their country, who, like almost every soldier during World War II, went through great trauma and bore that for the rest of their lives.”
Janice Wiggins, who learned of the display’s removal in October from two Dutch filmmakers, said her late husband would “be disappointed, but not shocked.”
“He wasn’t naive about the world he lived in,” she added.
The ABMC, which oversees 26 permanent US military cemeteries, told CNN in a statement that the panel in question was taken down following “an internal review of interpretive content” under the agency’s previous secretary, Charles Djou, and there are currently four other displays highlighting individual African American servicemembers buried at the cemetery.
Djou, a Biden appointee who says he was dismissed by President Donald Trump in April, told CNN in an email the panel’s removal was “done via an internal agency review at the prompting of the Trump administration.” CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
The ABMC said, “The panel was initially added upon request by the former U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands.”
“It was determined by the previous secretary, following the internal review in March, that while 1st Lt. Wiggins’ quote represented the immense contributions of many African American service members during the creation of the site, portions of the panels were outside the scope of ABMC’s commemorative mission. There was no external consultation or direction regarding its removal.”
The panel, which was added to an exhibit at the cemetery’s $6.7 million visitor center in 2024, was titled, “African American Servicemembers in WWII: Fighting on Two Fronts.” It described how Black service members, “despite the ongoing fight for civil rights at home during an era of racist policies” enlisted in every military branch and faced “the horrors of war.”
Janice Wiggins pushed for a panel shortly after the center opened in 2023, when she learned that none of the information or exhibits included any mention of the African American soldiers who buried the dead there. She worked with the former US Ambassador to the Netherlands, Shefali Razdan Duggal, and Mieke Kirkels, a Dutch oral historian, and the panel was installed months later.
‘The stark reality’
Wiggins waited until the late 2000s to revisit the memories of his service, which he would recount to Kirkels for an oral history after learning that he was the last known Black member of his unit alive.
The first person they buried was a young German girl, Wiggins recalled in the oral history rereleased in 2025. Her body had been mangled by machine gun fire; her head deformed by a grenade blast. As the Allied forces pressed on, more and more bodies of young American men arrived on trucks for Wiggins and his men to lay to rest. Many had been killed during airborne operations in the east or in the course of advances into German territory.
“There was a permanent arrival of bodies, the whole day long. Sundays included, seven days a week,” Wiggins said. “I find it difficult, even now, to read in the paper that soldiers ‘gave their lives.’ … All those boys in Margraten, their lives were taken away.”
“And here we all were – this group of Black Americans having to deal with these bodies of White Americans,” he said. “The stark reality was we had to bury those soldiers although we couldn’t sit in the same room with them when they were alive.”
For Wiggins, remembering what he saw was a painful, but necessary act. Janice Wiggins said he would often tell her that “people should know.” The contributions of Black soldiers during the war had been frequently overlooked — and in some cases lost forever. A fire at the National Personnel Records Center in 1973 destroyed millions of files.
“He never ever wanted the story to be about him. He saw his story as a vehicle,” she said.
Her husband, a sharecropper’s son who had lied about his age to enlist in the military, became a lifelong educator and civil rights activist. He was 87 when he died.
Removal causes local uproar
Theo Bovens, a Dutch politician who leads the Black Liberators in the Netherlands project, told CNN that local and regional politicians have asked the ABMC to reinstall the panel, along with another that highlights Technician 4th Class George H. Pruitt, a Black soldier from Camden, New Jersey, who died while trying to save a fellow soldier who had fallen into a river in Germany.
The ABMC told CNN on Monday that the Pruitt panel is “currently off display, though not out of rotation.” The part of the exhibit featuring Pruitt and other African American servicemembers at the cemetery, the agency said, has panels that were “designed to be removed and rotated.”
Janice Wiggins told CNN that the “panels were never intended to be part of a traveling exhibit or rotation” and “were intended to be a permanent part of the Visitors Center exhibits.”
The mayor of Eijsden-Margraten has formally asked the ABMC to reinstall the panels, insisting that the community values the contributions of Black American soldiers that helped liberate the Netherlands from the Nazis 80 years ago.
The governing body of the Limburg Province said it hopes to make a direct appeal to US Ambassador to the Netherlands Joe Popolo Jr. who was confirmed in October.
“The displayed panels depicted a history we must never forget, and from which we can learn a great deal—especially now, as global divisions are being increasingly magnified,” the body said.
The-CNN-Wire
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