We’ve all seen the scenes in American films: a soldier falls in the line of duty, and his comrades gather around a coffin draped with the Stars and Stripes. With solemn salutes and the mournful call of a trumpet, the ceremony blends patriotism, ritual, and shared grief. Whether on screen or in real life, the return of fallen American soldiers follows a carefully scripted choreography of duty and belonging.
This idea—that a soldier’s death serves not only as a personal loss but as a reaffirmation of the nation’s values—has deep historical roots. As historian George Mosse observed, modern military culture often frames such deaths in terms of martyrdom, demanding that the state honour those who died for its cause. Soldiers’ graves thus become symbols of loyalty, sacrifice, and national identity.
But what happens when the soldier fought for a nation not his own? Foreign war volunteers—defined by Nir Arielli as individuals who leave their homeland to fight for a cause out of conviction rather than profit—pose difficult questions of belonging and remembrance. Will they be honoured by the country they served or condemned as traitors at home? Will their graves follow the traditions of their adopted army, or will they rest under the symbols of their homeland? These questions are not merely practical but deeply symbolic. They touch on inclusion, exclusion, and the politics of memory.
The treatment of soldier burials has shifted over time. In early modern Europe, mercenaries who fought for pay were buried without ceremony, their deaths seen as part of their trade. With the French Revolution and the rise of the nation-state, soldiers were reimagined as citizen-warriors defending the homeland, their deaths imbued with new patriotic meaning. This, in turn, influenced how they were buried. For centuries, most common soldiers were condemned to mass graves, with hygiene and practicality taking precedence over commemoration. This began to change in the 19th century, and particularly after the U.S. Civil War, when dedicated military cemeteries like Gettysburg turned graves into sites of collective memory and national mourning.
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Foreign volunteers, however, rarely received the same recognition. Their resting places were often unmarked or neglected, reflecting the uneasy place they occupy in national narratives of war. Their burials reveal the shifting boundaries of honour, loyalty, and identity in both wartime and postwar remembrance.
During the Spanish Civil War, members of the International Brigades—foreign volunteers from over 50 countries who fought for the Spanish Republic—were buried in Fuencarral Cemetery in Madrid. After Franco’s victory, their remains were exhumed and dumped into an unmarked mass grave at Mount Pardo—an act reflecting how little the winning side valued their sacrifice. Had the Republic prevailed, their graves might well have been preserved and honoured. Today, under Spain’s Historical Memory Law, archaeologists are using ground-penetrating radar to locate these graves as part of a broader effort to recover the remains of at least 424 volunteers from 16 countries. It is a step toward restoring both the memory of these men and the cause for which they fought.
The French Foreign Legion, by contrast, has long maintained its own burial traditions. Though mercenaries rather than volunteers, it remains a striking example of men serving under a foreign flag. Legionnaires are typically interred in France in dedicated military cemetery sections, such as Castelnaudary’s carré militaire (‘military square’) or the Legionnaires’ Cemetery. The ossuary of the Souain National Cemetery contains 128 Legionnaires killed in 1915, including an American volunteer whose remains were moved there after the war. Burials sometimes honour individual wishes—as with General Zinovi Pechkoff, buried in a Russian cemetery under a Legionnaire’s headstone. These burial practices were never purely practical matters. They were statements about the meaning of a soldier’s death, shaped by the values of the living, which continue to be discussed and contested.
The same logic carried into the Second World War. Hundreds of thousands of foreigners volunteered for or were recruited into Nazi Germany’s armed forces, including men from the Soviet Union, Western Europe, and neutral countries. Burial practices for these soldiers generally followed German army regulations: individual graves marked with detailed information, the use of coffins when possible, and the prohibition of mass graves or interments in unsuitable locations. Ceremonies included flags, salutes, and music, though wartime conditions often forced significant simplifications.
Foreign volunteers in the Waffen-SS, the elite armed wing of the Nazi Party’s SS organisation that served alongside the German army, were buried under the same protocols as their German comrades. Their graves were marked with SS runes, but usually omitted their national origin was usually omitted, a deliberate choice by the Waffen-SS to promote a message of ideological unity. These men had fought and died for the same cause. In death, they were symbolically merged with German soldiers.
Yet the meaning of these graves did not end with the war. Their treatment and remembrance in the decades that followed became another battleground—this time over the historical record and the political framing of what these men had fought and died for. The graves and memorials of non-German Waffen-SS volunteers remain highly controversial. The presence of millions of foreign combatants made questions of burial and commemoration even more politically charged, as many of these men fought for an invading army—sometimes the very one that occupied their homeland—and took part in war crimes committed in the name of fascism. This legacy continues to make remembrance difficult in their countries of origin, where their roles remain deeply ambivalent and contested.
In the context of current events, volunteering for a cause – whether to fight for freedom and democracy, to defend a country, or for political, emotional, or even adventurous reasons–remains a compelling phenomenon. This is particularly clear in the case of foreign volunteers in Ukraine. Thousands of foreigners responded to President Zelensky’s appeal following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Many joined the International Legion or were directly employed by the Ukrainian Army, fighting alongside local forces. As foreign volunteers fight and die in Ukraine, however, familiar questions arise: What happens to their bodies after death? How should they be remembered? While these volunteers represent only a small portion of the logistical and human cost of the war, their deaths raise poignant issues of remembrance and commemoration.
Information on what happens to foreign volunteers after death is scarce—but some stories, like that of American volunteer Christopher Campbell, offer insight. As reported by The Kyiv Independent, Campbell, a 27-year-old member of Ukraine’s International Legion from the United States, died in early April 2023 near Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast. His funeral was marked by traditional Ukrainian rites: a guard of soldiers, the national anthem, Orthodox prayers, and his grieving fiancée in traditional Ukrainian dress. Unlike other foreign volunteers whose bodies were repatriated, Campbell expressed a wish to be buried in Ukraine, underscoring his deep connection to the cause he fought for. His fiancée, Ivana Sanina—a Ukrainian citizen—poignantly noted the need for a national memorial. ‘There needs to be a place of national memory’, she says, ‘where mothers, families of the fallen, as well as all Ukrainians, can come and see the names, the flags, the dates.’
Currently, symbolic spaces like Maidan Square, with its rows of flags, honour fallen Ukrainian soldiers. Proposals for a larger, permanent memorial complex are already being discussed. Ukraine’s Veterans’ Affairs Minister, Yuliia Laputina, has suggested creating a national military cemetery modelled after Arlington National Cemetery in the U.S., with a central monument or comprehensive military burial site outside Kyiv. Ivana Sanina has pledged that Campbell’s remains would be reinterred there if such a complex were built, emphasising that ‘he needs to be together with other soldiers […] Ukrainians should know that Americans were here, that they also died for us.’
Tomasz Sękala, a 22-year-old Polish volunteer who joined Ukraine’s International Legion in autumn 2023, was killed on 13 July 2024 near Dibrova in Luhansk Oblast. A farewell ceremony was held on 20 July at Kyiv’s Baikove Cemetery, attended by the Polish Consul in Kyiv, Paweł Owad. Sękala was then buried in his hometown in Poland’s Lublin Voivodeship. A photograph from the ceremony shows his coffin draped with Polish and Ukrainian flags, surrounded by representatives bearing Ukrainian state symbols and wreaths in the colours of both countries.
The presence of international volunteers like Campbell and Sękala raises questions about their role and motivations. While not officially representing their home countries, these individuals chose to support and defend the country in its ongoing conflict. Their involvement reflects the complex dynamics of contemporary warfare and the need for thoughtful commemoration that acknowledges the contributions of all who sacrificed their lives.
How will international volunteers be remembered in the future? Will Ukraine establish a national cemetery for those who fought in its defence, potentially including a dedicated section or list of names for non-Ukrainian volunteers? And what about their home countries—will there be memorials to honour these fighters of the International Legion?
Regulations for the International Legion regarding burial and commemoration are still limited. Based on media reports, most foreign volunteers’ bodies are either repatriated to civilian cemeteries in their home countries or remain in Ukraine. Since these individuals are not recognised by their national governments, they are often excluded from their home countries’ national military commemoration frameworks. Unless Ukraine integrates them into its own post-war memorial landscape, their contributions risk being overlooked.
At the same time, it is important to differentiate between the various categories of those who fight abroad—volunteers, mercenaries, freedom or resistance fighters, and their roles as members of invading or defensive armies—since these distinctions significantly shape how states and societies remember them. While the boundaries between these categories may blur in practice, they have profound consequences for recognition, legitimacy, and the moral framing of remembrance, as well as for questions of financial compensation—if granted at all—for the bereaved. Much also depends on the perspective from which they are viewed: for some, these men and women are celebrated as heroes who fought for freedom or solidarity; for others, they remain controversial figures—traitors, collaborators, or even criminals.
The question of how nations and communities acknowledge the sacrifices of those who fought for causes beyond their own borders remains complex and politically charged.
Further Reading:
Arielli, N. (2020). ‘Foreign fighters and war volunteers: between myth and reality’, European Review of History: Revue Européenne d’histoire, 27(1–2), 54–64.
Gilpin Faust, Drew. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
Janz, Nina. Remnants of Wehrmacht Soldiers : Burial and Commemoration Practices of German Soldiers of the Second World War in Russia and Europe, 1941-2023. Peter Lang, 2024.
Mosse, George L. Fallen Soldiers. Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. Oxford University Press, 1990.