This National Park Site Wants You To Remember Fallen Soldiers Beyond Memorial Day

Memorial Day remembers U.S. military members killed while serving

Memorial Day remembers members of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines killed while serving their country.

Memorial Day is the day we remember the U.S. military service members who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country.

They're never forgotten at Andersonville National Historic Site, one of 433 sites within the National Park System and the single deadliest ground of the Civil War.

Nearly 13,000 men died there, mostly prisoners of war.

"Andersonville National Historic Site preserves the story of all of our prisoners of war throughout all of America's conflicts," its Chief of Interpretation Susan Sernaker told USA TODAY.

The southwest Georgia site houses the National Prisoner of War Museum as well as Andersonville National Cemetery, the only National Park Service-run national cemetery that still has active burials.

Each Memorial Day weekend, volunteers help place flags on each grave, but visitors can pay respects all year. Here's what to know.

Andersonville was the site of the largest prison in the Civil War, Camp Sumter.

"The prison itself was not fully prepared to start bringing prisoners in," Sernaker said. "When it opened in February of 1864, some of the walls weren't completed yet, and there was difficulty in getting supplies here."

The lack of provisions, coupled with overcrowding, would prove deadly to thousands of Union soldiers imprisoned there.

"There was originally plans of exchange for prisoners during the Civil War, and after the Emancipation Proclamation was passed and there started being many African American men joining the U.S. Army, the Confederates said that they would not honor any exchanges of prisoners if they were African American," she explained. "(Ulysses S.) Grant basically then said, 'All right, well we're not going to have any exchanges,' and so that led to all of the prisons in the south becoming overcrowded, this one especially."

Sernaker said starvation, illness and wounds contributed to the deaths of more than 12,900 men at the overcrowded prison.

"They make up the largest sections in Andersonville National Cemetery," she said. Most of their names are attached to their graves.

Initially the prisoners were buried in coffins, but Sernaker said when wood ran out, their fellow prisoners carefully buried them side-by-side in long trenches as honorably as possible.

Not everyone was so honorable, though. There were six men known as the Raiders.

"The Raiders are men who were prisoners at Camp Sumter, the Andersonville prison site, who preyed upon their fellow prisoners, like stole stuff, beat people up, probably murdered. And they were tried by their fellow prisoners and hanged," Sernaker said. "They are buried here at the cemetery, but they are buried separate from everybody else."

Those six do not get flags on their graves for Memorial Day.

In addition to the soldiers who died at Camp Sumter, Andersonville National Cemetery is also the final resting place for thousands of service members from just about every U.S. conflict, not all of whom were prisoners of war but all of whom are veterans.

Sernaker said a number of Confederate guards were also initially buried there, but most were moved to nearby Americus, Georgia. Only one Confederate service member is still buried at Andersonville.

"There's a gentleman from the Sons of Confederate Veterans who gets a permit and comes out every year and places a small Confederate flag at at his grave," she said.

The national historic site's grounds and Andersonville National Cemetery are open between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. The National Prisoner of War Museum is closed those same three holidays but otherwise open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily.

It's free to visit.

So far, Sernaker said the site has not been impacted by reductions in the National Park Service.

"Nothing has changed here," she said. "We're ready and able, and we've got a really great crew that loves to talk about this history with people."

She noted visitors sometimes complain about the site being about 30 minutes from the interstate.

"We are in the middle of nowhere and that's why (the prison) was put here," she said. "It was also put here because there was a railroad track that was already running through this area, so it made it, unfortunately, a perfect drop-off point for these Union prisoners."