Where did you serve and what did you do?

In December 2025, members of the VFW Post 1617 in Derry, N.H., concluded an 22 monthlong project to document all veterans in their community cemetery. The purpose of the project was to locate and document the final resting place of each veteran buried or represented by a cenotaph in the cemetery to better honor their memory and sacrifice. To quote Abraham Lincoln, “Any nation that does not honor it’s heroes will not long endure.” Over time the veterans’ graves had overgrown and been covered with earth, with many VA footstones subsiding as much as 8 inches below grade, making it difficult and in numerous cases impossible to identify. During the project, Post members along with members of the community uncovered, cleaned and documented the grave markers of 1,563 veterans, doubling the number of previously known service members in the cemetery. Post members logged 907 service hours over the course of the project. Without the intervention of the Post and the community, these service members would have remained lost to history. Now that they are uncovered and visible again, they can be more readily honored again with flags on Memorial Day and throughout the year. The final document lists the names of each veteran, their rank, branch of service, birth and death dates, burial location (street, section, plot and grave) and service details where known. The document includes 33 service members who were killed in action, died of wounds or died in service along with six former prisoners of war, 55 Purple Heart recipients, three Silver Star recipients, and six admirals and generals. You can view the document on the town cemetery website at https://www.derrynh.gov/cemetery. May their memory endure.

How are you Still Serving?

The Post 1617 veterans graves project will will live on with flag placement on Veterans Day hosted by the Post in concert with members of the community at which time flags will be placed on each of the veterans graves that were identified during the project. Furthermore, new veteran markers will be placed on those graves that do not currently have any visible indication of their service further enabling recognition by the community of their sacrifice going forward. Additionally, post members are continually updating the listing of veterans in the cemetery on the town website to includenew burials as well as additional information of those previously identified as that information becomes available.

Why do you do it?

The veterans graves identification project was initiated after observing the difficulty Post and community members were having identifying veterans graves during previous years, flag placement events.