Created during the
Battle of Normandy on 20 June 1944, the cemetery was formed by the 603rd Quartermaster Graves Registration Company for the burial of fallen
1st US Army service personnel. Initially one field containing American war dead was created followed by another for German casualties. At the war's end over 7,300 German soldiers were interred at the cemetery. The
American Battle Monuments Commission began exhuming the remains of American servicemen after the war and transferred them in accordance with the wishes of their families. Beginning in 1945, the Americans moved two-thirds of their fallen from this site back to the United States while the remainder were re-interred at the new permanent
American Cemetery and Memorial at
Colleville-sur-Mer, which overlooks the
Omaha Beach landing beach. The burial plots of the Americans were reused by to inter German war dead from 1,400 locations across the Normandy region by the French authorities (
Service Francais des Sepultures). In 1954, the Franco-German War Graves Agreement ratified that the Reinterment Commission of the Volksbund could move German bodies from field graves and village cemeteries. During the removals many previously unknown German soldiers were identified. Between 1958 and 1961, Orglandes was redeveloped by the
German War Graves Commission. Over time, further German war dead were interred at the cemetery from their original field burials. There are now 10,152 graves at the site, arranged in 28 rows, each marked with a stone cross. Headstones are double-sided with the majority marking multiple interments. ==Layout==