01/15/2026
During World War II, over 420,000 Americans lost their lives serving their country. Sadly, many of the individual stories from World War II have been lost, and many of these fallen heroes have been forgotten.
For the last five years, volunteers across the country, supporting a project called Stories Behind the Stars (SBTS), have been documenting the individual stories of these fallen heroes. These stories are loaded onto Fold3 Memorials and are accessible via the https://www.findagrave.com/. The goal of the project is that family members and visitors can go up to any WWII fallen grave, type in their name into the FindAGrave app on their smartphone, and get a link to the soldier’s story on Fold3.com.
One of the volunteers in Georgia, Loren Plisco, is also a board member of the Cobb County Genealogical Society (CCGS). Early in 2025, Loren noted that there were many WWII fallen buried or memorialized in the Marietta National Cemetery (MNC). He encouraged CCGS to adopt those World War II fallen at MNC, so that their stories could be told using the resources and tools provided by SBTS (https://www.storiesbehindthestars.org/). After researching the cemetery and associated records, Loren found that there were about 360 World War II fallen in the cemetery. A list of the World War II fallen at MNC was created and posted on the CCGS website. This list provides basic information about each fallen, such as Date of Birth, Date of Death, Headstone location, and where they were killed. The stories typically include family history information such as their parents and siblings, where they lived prior to joining the military, and any details about their service and the units they were assigned.
For the past year, Loren has coordinated the work of several other volunteers to prepare the stories about these fallen heroes, and in December 2025 the stories for every fallen soldier at MNC were completed.
Not surprisingly, as you walk through the cemetery and read the stories of these fallen, you can also walk through the many battles, campaigns, and tragic events of the global war. The cemetery has fallen heroes from the first day of the war for the United States, 7 December 1941 at Pearl Harbor, and the last days of the war in the Pacific in August 1945. There are also solders from the North Africa, Sicily, and Italy campaigns; from the Battle of the Atlantic; from D-Day, and the Allied march through France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Germany in the European Theater, including the Battle of the Bulge. There are fallen from the Pacific Theater, including Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Pelilieu, Philippines, and Tinian. In addition to those that died from combat operations, there are also those that were killed by disease, aircraft accidents, accidental explosions, and training accidents. Some of these men died as Prisoners of War. There are fallen heroes from the Coast Guard, Merchant Marine, Army, Army Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. Among these fallen, there are four pairs of brothers that are honored in the cemetery.
The two headstones are cenotaphs for William Fielder Herren and his brother Albert Felix Herren, Jr. The brothers were both based in the Philippines at a US Navy Patrol Squadron when the Japanese invaded in December 1941. William went missing in action on a bombing mission in February 1942, and his brother Albert, who had been wounded, was captured by the Japanese in May 1942. After enduring several years as a POW, the Japanese loaded POWs from the Philippines onto a merchant ship in October 1944, but the unmarked ship was sunk by a US submarine on 24 October 1944, and Albert was lost with the ship.
Image of Marietta National Cemetery is copyrighted by Karen Molohon.
