| Original caption: “White crosses at the head of fresh-dug graves mark the final resting places of U.S. soldiers at Béja Cemetery in Northern Tunisia, June 5, 1943. The cemetery has been laid out formally, and gravel walks criss-cross through the burial grounds.” Béja is an important market town at the junction of 3 main highways. The modern Béja was built on the site of Vaga, 1 of the principal cities of Numidia, which came under the overlordship of Rome after the victories of Quintus Metellus (c. 155 BC – c. 91 BC) and Gaius Marius (c. 157 BC – January 13, 86 BC) in the Jugurthine wars, an armed conflict between the Roman Republic and King Jugurtha of Numidia, a kingdom on the north African coast. Béja is set in a majestic landscape of broken hills, bright green in spring and autumn, but bleached in summer. The country is fertile, growing mainly grain, but there are also a few vineyards. On November 16, 1942, Béja was occupied by British forces of the 1st Army in their advance from Algeria after landing in Operation Torch. The United Kingdom Béja War Cemetery contains graves to this day of men who died in the winter of that year and the following spring. The cemetery lies north of the town and beside the defunct European cemetery, from which it is separated by a high wall. A flight of steps leads from the road to the entrance. 396 British Commonwealth graves remain at Béja: 307 United Kingdom soldiers, 1 Canadian, 1 New Zealand, and 87 unidentified. There are corner seats just inside the cemetery, which is long and narrow in shape, with the Cross of Sacrifice at its centre. At the far end a fine background is provided by a grove of eucalyptus trees, and a stat as been placed in their shade Crimson Bougainville and white polygonum cover the wall of the adjacent European cemetery and a hedge of orange-berried pyracantha marks the opposite boundary. Violets, which bloom from January to March, and gazanias, verbenas and roses are planted in the headstone borders. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on April 6, 1946, “Below Hill 609 [scene of a major engagement at Djebel Tahent, April 27, May 1, 1943] is Béja, where the big cemetery lies. The French have a reverent way of maintaining our burial grounds. The plots are neatly tended and someone always places flowers by the graves. Sometimes I wonder if American boys there could be consulted, wouldn’t they prefer to sleep where they fell. When 1 contemplates the grass-grown graveyard at home and considers the reopened sorrow of transporting and reinterring the dead, it seems almost as if the heroes might rest more content side by side the crosses: Béja’s Cemetery is larger than Tebessas, but the 1 at Gafsa is well filled, too. [Gafsa] holds the dead from [the Battle of] El Guettar [(March 23 – April 3, 1943)], and is among the 1st laid out by our Quartermaster Corps. As of September 12, 1945, Army Service Forces listed 451 American and 128 Axis burials at Béja, for a total of 579 temporary graves. These remains were exhumed and repatriated to the United States, or reburied in the American Battlefield Monuments Commission Cemetery at Carthage, depending on the preferences of the next-of-kin. The Cemetery was removed by 1948. | |
| Image Filename | wwii2074.jpg |
| Image Size | 491.63 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 1278 x 1298 |
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| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | January 1, 1943 |
| Location | |
| City | Béja |
| State or Province | Béja |
| Country | Tunisia |
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| Record Number | |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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