Inside are the engraved names of 563 missing, most of whom served in the United States Navy and Coast Guard, whose graves are in the sea.

Among those reburied in Brookwood American Cemetery were victims of the German U-boat UB-77 attack on the SS Tuscania, a British troop transport of the Anchor Line, sunk on 5 February 1918 off the coast of Scotland with the loss of 210 souls.

After the entry of the United States into the Second World War the American cemetery was enlarged, with burials of US servicemen beginning in April 1942.

With large numbers of American personnel based in the west of England, a dedicated rail service for the transport of bodies operated from Devonport to Brookwood.

[3] On the authority of Thomas B. Larkin, Quartermaster General of the United States Army, the US servicemen buried at Brookwood during the Second World War were exhumed in January–May 1948.

They were not transferred to Cambridge in 1948, but instead reburied in unmarked graves at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery Plot E, a dedicated site for US servicemen executed during the Second World War.

Swartwout designed the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City (1917) and Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza Bailey Fountain (1929).

This included replacing all headstones to meet strict ABMC regulations, extensive ground works, removal of trees with borders redesigned and replanted.

There are unit insignia worked into the glass and the branches of service for the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard.

Another naval disaster was the USS Alcedo, a former pleasure yacht that converted to a navy escort, and the first American ship lost in the war.

Also included on the wall are the names of the 11 men of the USCGC Seneca who were lost on 16 September 1918, while attempting to assist the steamship Wellington.