Technical Details

PLANNING THE MEMORIAL

Initial planning of the memorial commenced in the summer of 2003. A number of e-mails, telephone calls and letters were exchanged with the American Battle Monuments Commission, to obtain the information needed to reproduce the 42 monuments depicted in the memorial. The ABMC is an agency of the United States Federal government, which is charged with the oversight of all the American cemeteries the world over. The ABMC is an excellent resource, with extremely helpful people ready to provide information. You are invited to check their web site. http://www.abmc.gov/

MONUMENTS

The monuments were each cut from polystyrene, which differs from styrofoam in that it is much more durable and difficult to break. While it is difficult to break, individual pieces are easily “fused” with a heat gun (no glue required) to become as strong as if the joined pieces were one single piece. The ABMC supplied copies of the dimensional drawing used by Italian marble cutters for the actual monuments used in American military cemeteries. The replica monuments required four weeks to construct.

MONUMENT FONT

The font used on the monuments is a modification of a font found on the internet (author unknow), called “govtmark.ttf”. The ABMC also supplied drawings of each letter used on the monuments, again from the specifications used by the marble cutters in Italy. With the aid of those drawings, the “govtmark.ttf” font was altered to reflect the differences in each character described in the ABMC drawings. The result was that a new font “amerbatmon.ttf” was developed and named in honor of the organization which provided so much information for this project. This font may be found in the Downloads section if you would like to download it.