The Missing of WW1 - Numbers

[Jack Sheldon]

Fine. I would not take issue with that. I only raised the matter to indicate to those who would wish draw definite conclusions from the number of unknowns tended by the CWGC one factor which would tend to throw out their calculations. Another point of some significance is the fact that the 'bounty' system employed by the Allies post war to compensate farmers and landowners for their time and trouble when they reported the discovery of remains boosted the number of 'British' unknowns. Why? Because the British paid the largest amount per body, so it was far from unknown for discovers to throw an old British helmet or some shreds of rotting uniform or personal equipment in alongside the body/bones,so as to be able to maximise their reward.

Jack

[roel22]

Because the British paid the largest amount per body, so it was far from unknown for discovers to throw an old British helmet or some shreds of rotting uniform or personal equipment in alongside the body/bones,so as to be able to maximise their reward.

Around Ypres they paid five times as much for British remains compared to German: 5 (Belgian) francs for a Brit, 3 for a Frenchman and 1 for a German.

Roel

[divadnosae]

It depends on where and when the casualty died, for example simple hygiene at medical facilities dictated bodies should be buried as quickly as possible, one account by an RAMC officer records how he took it on himself to bury the British dead around a new position. The same officer recounts how German soldiers were simply removed from occupied trenches and dumped, and we must assume the same occurred to the British. Of course this could only take place later, while troops waited for a counter attack they shared the space with the dead, at Gallipolli this went on for weeks.

When he first went to the Western Front the war artist Sir William Orpen was shocked by the number of unburied and partly buried bodies of both men and horses decomposing on the Western Front. After the war he was asked if he could paint the Somme from memory, and claimed that was easy to do but he could never recapture the smell. In a letter to a friend he recalls how three weeks after a battle an attempt was made to bury the dead but notes, 'mud was thrown over them, no attempt was made to cover them' , a scene he later depicted in 'The Mad Woman of Douai'. To some critics this shows the link between insanity and the bodies, the memory of which drove Orpen to alcoholism and early death. Like other artists and photographers from 1917 he was subject to censorship under DORA and it was impossible to show pictures of the dead as it was felt this would 'aid the enemy'.

http://www.guardian....uardianreview31

Other accounts, describe how soldiers would find their way in the trenches especially nearer the front line using the corpses as landmarks. These could not be buried as it was only when a battlefield was consolidated and free from artillery and sniper fire the dead could be buried, even then it could often only be done at night. It's not for nothing the 'place names' used by the soldiers often reflect this. Men were bribed with extra rum ration to move and bury the dead who had been out there for weeks. All the time cemeteries were captured and recaptured, shelled or dug over. New communication trenches were dug and at least one account tells of this activity opening a French mass grave.

I think it was one of the reason. veterans were reluctant to talk about their experience, it must have been impossible to describe and no comfort to the bereaved. They often dealt with it by black humour. There is a persistent myth recounted in 'Somme Mud' of soldiers 'shaking hands with the dead' or the extremities protruding from the ground 'for luck', as they moved up the front.

For many more though the experience could only be blotted out by alcohol and led to lasting psychological damage as described in the above article.

Ken

Many thanks Ken

I had no idea about any of this so yours and other threads are very informative despite the subject. Arthurs family are all with him now but at the time must have had many questions to ask. Without the internet and knowledgeable people on sites like this, it must have been frustrating in 1918 onwards for them to understand. I also believe that no family since has ever seen his memorial stone in Pozierers Cemetery and I intend to correct that very soon

[phil andrade]

Fine. I would not take issue with that. I only raised the matter to indicate to those who would wish draw definite conclusions from the number of unknowns tended by the CWGC one factor which would tend to throw out their calculations. Another point of some significance is the fact that the 'bounty' system employed by the Allies post war to compensate farmers and landowners for their time and trouble when they reported the discovery of remains boosted the number of 'British' unknowns. Why? Because the British paid the largest amount per body, so it was far from unknown for discovers to throw an old British helmet or some shreds of rotting uniform or personal equipment in alongside the body/bones,so as to be able to maximise their reward.

Jack

Thank you for posting this, Jack. I , for one, have relied heavily on the CWGC registers as an indication of the true extent of British fatalities, and it comes as rather a sobering revelation that the figure might be significantly distorted by the inclusion of large numbers of "Unknowns" buried in , say, Tyne Cot, who are in fact German. I do hope that this is not the case in a very large number of the unidentified .....wouldn't the British recovery teams have been aware of this ( especially in view of the higher bounties) and been rather circumspect about readily accepting claims ?

I have to admit, though, that sometimes the records of CWGC registers do indicate numbers of British dead that significantly exceed the evidence of official casualty returns, and I'm beginning to wonder whether the inclusion of German dead as British "Unknowns" might, in part, account for this.

Here's an example: the British Official History tabulates casualties for Third Ypres July 31 -November 12 1917 as 35,831 killed, 172,944 wounded and 29,488 missing. If two thirds of the missing were in fact killed, and ten per cent of the wounded died of their wounds, we would conjecture a total of 73,000 British fatalities for the entire battle.

The evidence cited by Franky Bostyn in his book on Passchendale is based on CWGC registers, and reveals that there are 33,716 identified and 43,316 unidentified or unrecovered Commonwealth dead buried or comemorated in Belgium for the same period, and he emphasises "...The actual number of dead is undoubtedly somewhat higher....as those who died of wounds sustained during the battle were often buried ...in "Base Hospitals" in France and in Great Britain." By this reckoning, the 73,000 (notional, admittedly) total of British dead is signficantly exceeded : in this case by several thousand.

Could this be because among the 43,316 unrecovered or unidentified dead in the CWGC, there are several thousand Germans buried as "Unknown" at Tyne Cot or elsewhere ?

Editing : now, I begin to wonder, am I getting confused ? Those 43,316 are all named

aren't they ? Doesn't that mean that they must all be, by definition, British Empire dead, whether they were buried as unknowns or lost altogether ? In either event, they are commemorated on the memorials to the missing. That still doesn't address the stark possibility that many of the dead marked as "unknown" in CWGC cemeteries might be German.

Phil (PJA)

[auchonvillerssomme]

There may also be an issue of just how much of a body is recovered to be commemorated as a body. The disruption of the remains either at the time by shell or later by animals or even later by ploughing could lead to issues where the same person could be buried twice or 2 being buried as one. Certainly during WW2 during the Blitz (I will find the reference) spare limbs were added to complete remains.

[truthergw]

........................................

Here's an example: the British Official History tabulates casualties for Third Ypres July 31 -November 12 1917 as 35,831 killed, 172,944 wounded and 29,488 missing. If two thirds of the missing were in fact killed, and ten per cent of the wounded died of their wounds, we would conjecture a total of 73,000 British fatalities for the entire battle.

The evidence cited by Franky Bostyn in his book on Passchendale is based on CWGC registers, and reveals that there are 33,716 identified and 43,316 unidentified or unrecovered Commonwealth dead buried or comemorated in Belgium for the same period, and he emphasises "...The actual number of dead is undoubtedly somewhat higher....as those who died of wounds sustained during the battle were often buried ...in "Base Hospitals" in France and in Great Britain." By this reckoning, the 73,000 (notional, admittedly) total of British dead is signficantly exceeded : in this case by several thousand.

Could this be because among the 43,316 unrecovered or unidentified dead in the CWGC, there are several thousand Germans buried as "Unknown" at Tyne Cot or elsewhere ?

......................................

Phil (PJA)

I am genuinely struggling to follow this. Why do you assume that two thirds of the missing were dead? Would not many of the missing be prisoners? On what do you base your estimate of 10% deaths from wounded ? Once in hospital, a man's chances were improved enormously. All that to one side. You then compare two sets of figures and try to draw conclusions from them. Very little real conclusion can be drawn from two such disparate sets of figures. Taking sets of figures then adding and altering them at will to give credence to a notion is exactly the sin inveighed against in the catch-phrase, " Lies,damned lies and statistics".

[phil andrade]

Good questions, Tom. I assure you that I did not make random assumptions.

What I do is try and cross check against the sources that I have,

For example : the Official Medical History provides the breakdown for British battle casualties on the Western Front in 1917, and tabulates a total of 564,694 wounded, of whom 49,832 died of their wounds ; a mortality of just under nine per cent. Hence my estimate of ten per cent for the Third Ypres fighting...I'm attempting to reconcile the official figures for that campaign with evidence from CWGC, and have deemed it apt to allow for somewhat more than the actual figure, in order to see if the official figure, by dint of a little "stretching", might be brought into line with the evidence of the War Graves.

Likewise, Medical History reveals that 23,227 British prisoners were taken by the Germans in 1917. We know that nearly 7,000 of these were captured in the German counter attack at Cambrai; a comparable number were taken in April and May in the Arras fighting, largley around Bullecourt. This leaves a balance of roughly 10,000 for all the rest of the Western Front fighting, so I think we might reasonably assume that, of the nearly 30,000 missing reported in the Third Ypres battles, two thirds, approximately, were dead.

You might well insist that I place too much credence on the Medical History casualty statistics, but I would defy you to find a more authoratitive and reliable source for British casualty figures.

What I'm driving at here is that I find it difficult to reconcile the BOH version of casualty figures with the evidence of the CWGC data.

Even if I make a rather large allowance for the number who died from wounds, and aportion two thirds of the missing to the dead, the number falls short of the total implied in the evidence of burials and commemorations. I have accepted that we can determine the general level of magnitude...but there is still an uncomfortable disparity.

You will, I hope, see that I have not plucked figures out of air or made random assumptions, but have relied on three sets of authentic figures and attempted to reconcile them.

What do you mean by "..to give credence to a notion" ?

Phil (PJA)

[kenf48]

Taking sets of figures then adding and altering them at will to give credence to a notion is exactly the sin inveighed against in the catch-phrase, " Lies,damned lies and statistics".

Absolutely, there are even more variables other than those you mention, and assumptions are being made that have no basis in fact as far as it pertains to the work of the CWGC.

To support the assumption we are asked to support a level of incompetence or corruption never hitherto revealed among those responsible for grave registration. While the situation may have been chaotic while hostilities continued, records were still kept as best as they could throughout the war. After the war a monumental task was completed to recover and honour the dead and clean up the battlefield.

If we take Tyne Cot as an example, the wall contains details of 33,783 UK casualties and 1176 from New Zealand; there are 11956 Commonwealth burials, of which 8369 are unidentified, or to put it another way around a quarter of those men named on the wall may be interred in the Cemetery. To my knowledge there has never been any suggestion these unidentified burials are not from the Commonwealth. I accept a handful may be incorrectly recorded due to human error or someone out to make a couple of francs, but we'll never know.

What we do know, from Fromelles for example, is that the bodies were usually segregated in death according to nationality. Where Germans are buried in CWGC cemeteries this is noted, at Etaples, for example, there are 662 non Commonwealth graves "mainly German', 6 of which are unidentified. This is evidence, albeit limited, that every effort was made to accurately record the nationality of the remains from the outset. (CWGC maintain a total of 40000 non Commonwealth graves from both wars).

To 'give credit to the notion' the unidentified includes 'a large percentage' or 'many thousands' of non Commonwealth graves is not only just plain wrong and not supported by any evidence it is also an unwarranted criicism of the competency of those, who for nearly a century have tried to redress the horror described in my earlier post and which had such a lasting effect on the combatants of all nations and would have distressed the bereaved beyond comprehension had they been aware of it.

I think Phil can safely rely on CWGC registers until proof is provided to the contrary. Otherwise imo it's just another unfounded 'conspiracy' theory.

Ken

Edited 14 November , 2010 by kenf48

[Seadog]

Fine. I would not take issue with that. I only raised the matter to indicate to those who would wish draw definite conclusions from the number of unknowns tended by the CWGC one factor which would tend to throw out their calculations. Another point of some significance is the fact that the 'bounty' system employed by the Allies post war to compensate farmers and landowners for their time and trouble when they reported the discovery of remains boosted the number of 'British' unknowns. Why? Because the British paid the largest amount per body, so it was far from unknown for discovers to throw an old British helmet or some shreds of rotting uniform or personal equipment in alongside the body/bones,so as to be able to maximise their reward.Jack

Where is the proof that this actually happened Jack and even if it did which I doubt, would such a practice have distorted the resulting statistics to any great extent.?

Regards

Norman

[phil andrade]

Jack's contention is an uncomfortable one to contemplate.

The Etaples example of 662 non Commonwealth dead is very different from Tyne Cot, principally for the reason that Etaples was a huge base and not a battlefield....presumably the Germans had died in hospital there : no difficulty with ID.

But what of the tens of thousands of decomposing dead that Ludendorff recoiled from around Passchendaele in April 1918 ?

These were surely promiscuously strewn around the crater field, with much intermingling. It must have been hard to differentiate between many of them , although L. was keen to tell us that two thirds were British and one third German.

How the CWGC was able to sort out such a horrific mess is hard to imagine.

I feel somewhat re-assured that Ken suggests I can rely on the War Graves data ...what troubles me slightly is the prospect that the BOH reckoning of British casualties at Third Ypres appears to be rather understated if those CWGC figures are correct.

Phil (PJA)

[ianw]

Jack's contention is an uncomfortable one to contemplate.

I don't find it so. An unknown soldier is precisely that. I take a degree of comfort from the prospect that there may be a "rainbow coalition" of former enemies and allies in some of our cemeteries. It seems to me precisely the sort of gentle practical joke that a caring God might play on his errant creations!

I think I was partially responsible for kicking off this frank exchange of views when I acknowledged (IMO) that Jack's contention that there would inevitably be German unknowns buried in British Cemeteries was a "fact". I still think this is the case but would have to add a caveat by saying that I wouldn't necessarily agree that they represent a "significant %" of the unknowns. We can never know this statistic. Another piece of information "Known unto God" alone.

I am very interested in the battlefield clearances and have posted several times commenting on the chaos and administrative corruption that beset the Australian Graves Service. The AGS were certainly very approximate in some of their work and I have no doubt that they would have inadvertently buried Germans and French as British and also split groups of remains into approximate numbers of casualties.

I also have no doubt that the 5X bounty differential between British and German remains would have led to the "anglicisation" of some remains by the judicious addition of a boot, SMLE, helmet or whatever.

But as I said above, in death they are all equal and it really matters not. To paraphrase, Wilfred Owen in "Strange Meeting" :-

"I am the enemy you killed my friend ... Let us sleep now".

Perhaps side by side at Tyne Cot?

[phil andrade]

I don't find it so. An unknown soldier is precisely that. I take a degree of comfort from the prospect that there may be a "rainbow coalition" of former enemies and allies in some of our cemeteries. It seems to me precisely the sort of gentle practical joke that a caring God might play on his errant creations!

What an exquisite turn of phrase, and very noble sentiment.....I feel rather humbled now.

Phil (PJA)

[ianw]

Thanks Phil.

I have found this thread quite thought-provoking. It would be good to get further views from other Pals.

[phil andrade]

The crucial thing for me to remember, as I struggle through a labrynth of different statistics, is that whoever lies under headstones marked "A Soldier of The Great War", the numbers provided by the CWGC are definitive, because the insitution does what it promised to do....it gives a name.

While I am convinced that we must give credit to Jack's point - and countenance the prospect of Germans being buried as unknowns in CWGC cemeteries - we can still rest assured that the numbers commemorated as missing in the registers are reliable.

Phil (PJA)

[kenf48]

Jack's contention is an uncomfortable one to contemplate.

The Etaples example of 662 non Commonwealth dead is very different from Tyne Cot, principally for the reason that Etaples was a huge base and not a battlefield....presumably the Germans had died in hospital there : no difficulty with ID.

Phil (PJA)

The point about Etaples was that I was aware there were a large number of German graves in the cemetery (it was also a POW 'cage') but even where they were unidentified they were commemorated as, for example, 'a German soldier known unto God'. I did not know how many and the numbers came from the CWGC Cemetery Report. In other words evidence the IWGC registered the nationality, or as was pointed out above whatever information they had.

The CWGC Tyne Cot online report does not say unfortunately how many, if any at all, of the unidentified burials are not from the Commonwealth. Does anyone know if there are any German graves, unlike Etaples where a relative is interred, I've only visited Tyne Cot once and can't recall seeing any.

Ken

[roel22]

. Does anyone know if there are any German graves, unlike Etaples where a relative is interred, I've only visited Tyne Cot once and can't recall seeing any.

Ken

Tyne Cot has 4 German graves, of which 3 are unidentified.

Roel

[kenf48]

Tyne Cot has 4 German graves, of which 3 are unidentified.

Roel

Thank you,

Ken

[ianw]

I stood in fron of these German graves just a few weeks ago. They are certainly central and in prominent positions. I suppose because they were original battlefield burials.

I must say that the post-war Tyne Cot planners were far-sighted to leave them there and not be tempted to "tidy them up" in some way.

[andrew pugh]

Good Evening All.

Is there any truth in the fact that it was agreed in the terms by the Belgium Goverment that after the war all German battlefield cemeteries in Belgium had to be removed after 15 years and and concentrated into larger cemeteries?

Regards Andy

[phil andrade]

Judging by the fact that in excess of 130,000 German dead from the Great War are concentrated in so few cemeteries in Belgium, one might assume that this was the result of insistence by the Belgian government.

It might also be a function of financial pressure : it's expensive to maintain a large number of small plots, especially for a nation bearing the burden of defeat.

Andy, editing here...I've just looked at data from the "In Flanders Fields" Museum website:

There were about 220,000 German soldiers who died at the front in (West) Flanders and about 127,500 of them are buried here. Just after the war, these were spread over at least 170 cemeteries. They were first transferred to 120 cemeteries which were built on land rented for 30 years.

In the 1950s, the West German and Belgian governments reached an agreement to concentrate most of the graves in just four war cemeteries on land which was handed over permanently to the German War Graves Commission. These sites are Menen-Wald (47,864 bodies), Langemark (44,307), Vladso (25,644) and Hooglede (8,247). A further 1,424 German soldiers are buried in British Commonwealth cemeteries.

Note the disparity between the 220,000 German deaths there and the 127,500 who are buried....an indication of virtually 40% of their dead remaining missing ?

Phil (PJA)

[roel22]

These sites are Menen-Wald (47,864 bodies), Langemark (44,307), Vladso (25,644) and Hooglede (8,247). A further 1,424 German soldiers are buried in British Commonwealth cemeteries.

A small note: According to "Het Duits militair kerkhof 1914-1918 in Hooglede" by Dirk Verhelst the last reburials in Hooglede took place in 1937, making this the only German cemetery around Ypres that had no part in the mass-reburials of the fifties and sixties.

Roel

[phil andrade]

That figure 0f 220,000 German dead in Belgium 1914-18 : I wonder what the source is. If it's valid, it does imply that some 42% of the German dead were not recovered.

I suspect, however, that "In Flanders Fields" might have hazarded an independent estimate here. If the same proportion of unrecovered dead applies to France as well as Belgium, we might assume that, with 900,000 Geman Great War dead interred in cemeteries along the entire Western Front, another 600,000 remain unrecovered there.

Phil (PJA)