Rows of markers cover 5.1 acres at Wilmington National Cemetery in New Hanover County, North Carolina. Administered by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, this National Cemetery covers 5.1 acres (2.1 ha) and, as of the end of 2005, holds over 6,000 interred remains. The federal government purchased this land in 1867; most of the original interments were moved here from Wilmington City Cemetery and from nearby forts such as Fort Fisher, and by 1870 there were over 2,000 burials.
A somber chapter came in 1918, when an influenza outbreak aboard a ship docked on the Cape Fear River took the lives of twenty-eight Puerto Rican laborers who were en route to Fayetteville to aid in construction of Camp Bragg; they were interred here. The cemetery itself earned listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. Among those buried is George "Possum" Whitted (1890–1962), a major league baseball player and World War I veteran, and there is one British Commonwealth war grave: a Royal Artillery Gunner of World War II.
Picture George 'Possum' Whitted's marker among the rows, and the lone British Commonwealth war grave nearby.