War cemeteries a sham?

[seaforths]

Hazel if you look for the book then make sure you get the latest edition. They have published 5 editions as they find out more information they revise it. The first edition is 1998 the edition I have is 2009 - they might have even published another edition since but good luck and enjoy! Tell me what your conclusion is I would be interested to know.

You may already know this and I apologise if you do. But I note your Seaforth & Gordon interests. There is a book 'Sword of the North' - seems very sought after judging by the prices it is commanding on the second hand book market. However it is available now to view on line almost 700 pages. It has masses of information and photographs on the regiments you are interested in and more besides. I was looking through it last night and will return to it again as there are personal accounts of burials and funerals in the field etc. If you haven't got it or seen it and can't find the link drop me a message.

Marjorie

[roel22]

Marjorie, why not publish the link in this thread (so others can read the book as well)?

Roel

[seaforths]

Hi Roel,

If you use the well known search engine with the double vowel and type Sword of the North it is the first one that comes up (Am Baile website)

If it makes it easier or it doesn't show then this should take you there:

http://www.ambaile.org.uk/en/search/data?type_id=7&field,DC_RELATION,substring,string=The+Sword+of+the+North%3A+Highland+Memories+of+the+Great+War

So enjoy

Marjorie

[scottmarchand]

_{cross posting from another section on individual soldiers, very relevant to this discussion here: http://digital.slv.vic.gov.au/view/action/nmets.do?DOCCHOICE=673899.xml&dvs=1343182375853~406&locale=en_US&search_terms=&adjacency=&usePid1=true&usePid2=true}

[hazelclark]

Link doesn't seem to work! Will try to look for the other thread.

Hazel C

[scottmarchand]

Well, sorry about that , here is the thread link

http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=182782

[hazelclark]

Well, sorry about that , here is the thread link

http://1914-1918.inv...howtopic=182782

Thanks Scott! This is very interesting.

H.C.

[gerd.deboeck]

Thank you to the Belgian gentlemen posting – for your honesty. I am sorry that you seemed to be sniped at for this. You could so easily have kept quiet or even said no – that didn’t happen. But you didn’t – you spoke up and as I see it told the truth. And in trying all these years later to understand – we must look at the bigger picture of what occurred and acknowledge that too.

Thanks Marjorie

Gerd

[TheUnknownWarrior]

My Grandpa was in charge of Flanders Exhumation work. He was a man of the utmost integrity- Padre George Kendall OBE.

[Muerrisch]

I think that is an epitaph few could aspire to, so God Bless him and RIP.

[JimSmithson]

My Grandpa was in charge of Flanders Exhumation work. He was a man of the utmost integrity- Padre George Kendall OBE.

Thank you. It must have been a little painful to read through some parts of this thread. It must have been a very painful assignment for him.

Jim

[martin14]

A most interesting thread, thank you to all the contributors.

Must admin, I am finding this topic rather barren.

Does anyone believe that there are no human remains buried in the CWGC cemeteries?

Does anyone believe that every single grave marker carries the correct details of the man it represents, and that it is precisely positioned above his remains?

Every grave ?

No, but I was pretty sure there would have been some clear method of detailing the grave markers,

or else the headstone would have been listed as 'Unknown ".

Certainly the cemteries around the hospitals, farther away from the front, should have had fairly decent records.

' Known to be ' memorial stone are that.. they have documentation, maybe even a witness to the original burial, but no body

' Believed to be '.. documentation, but no body.

A name.. should have had clear means of identifying the remains put in front of the stone.

In the article around St Julien and the trees, one of the locals suggested moving the headstones, as if he wasnt thinking about what was underneath them.

I live in Brussels for now, and the amount that people here don't know about WWI is really shocking,

they dont study it all, despite lots of it happening all around them.. and for them..

[gerd.deboeck]

I live in Brussels for now, and the amount that people here don't know about WWI is really shocking,

they dont study it all, despite lots of it happening all around them.. and for them..

In reaction to all who keep mentioning the "ignorance of the Belgians". I'm since a couple of months working with an intern from Reading University in my lab in Antwerp, Belgium and I can confirm he knows (to my surprise) as much or as little of the Great War as the average Belgian. They did study it at school but he was more interested in WWII, so already forgot a lot of the predecessor. And there is the key word: 'Interest'. We must come to terms with it: Most people don't give a .... about history and/or WWI. This said I must admit that over here even less are interested and this can be explained by the lack of nationalism and pride we Belgians suffer from, especially the Dutch speaking part.

For those interested: in Belgium it's difficult to study WW1 without opening that can of worms called "Collaboration and Activism". This is also the reason why I am studying Ypers Salient instead of the Yser front. Do not judge without knowledge.

Gerd

[TheUnknownWarrior]

I think that is an epitaph few could aspire to, so God Bless him and RIP.

He left a book Im hoping is published. Thankyou for your good wishes.

[TheUnknownWarrior]

Thank you. It must have been a little painful to read through some parts of this thread. It must have been a very painful assignment for him.

Jim

Thanks Jim. The truth stands alone. It was but he sincerely believed it was the flesh that was being buried, not the spirit and that gave him strength.

[egbert]

For the interested, here is a contemporary French text about fraud in conjunction with reburial fraud. If somebody is interested you can translate with a altavista or similar web-translator:

Rapport résumé daté du 13 mai 1926 relatif à la découverte d’ossements dans le cimetière militaire désaffecté de Xxxxx dans la Marne.

Ce cimetière à été crée pendant la guerre, et les corps qu’il contenait ont été regroupés en mars 1922 dans le cimetière du Xxxxxx de Xxxxxx par l’entreprise Xxxxxx.

Le terrain à été rendu à son propriétaire, mais au cours de fondations effectués pour la construction d’une maison il a été découvert des ossements.

Ils sont soigneusement recueillis dans des sacs de toiles neufs sur lesquels sont porté les noms des militaires et déposés dans un local attenant au cimetière communal.

Il ressort de ce document que la responsabilité de l’entreprise des travaux de regroupement semble sérieusement engagée.

La presse va s’emparer de ce scandale, voici quelques extraits paru dans un journal local :

« On a beaucoup parlé des scandales des exhumations. La délicate opération des transferts des corps, difficile à organiser, ne pouvait sans doute s’effectuer sans quelques incidents : mais on a vu trop souvent de véritables monstruosités. Les individus qui se sont chargés de cette mission sacrée (il fallait pourtant qu’il y en ait) se sont comportés trop souvent en ignobles mercantis. Ils ont sabotés cette besogne macabre ; ils ont trafiqué avec les glorieuses dépouilles de nos frères d’armes comme avec une vulgaire marchandise !

C’est en présence d’un scandale de cette nature que nous nous trouvons, à Xxxxx, où l’on fouille à nouveau tout l’emplacement de l’ancien cimetière.

Que trouve-t-on dans ce cimetière qui comprenait 303 tombes françaises et 432 tombes allemandes?

Tout d’abord la presque totalité des cercueils qui eussent dû être brûlés ont été laissées en terre ; puis on y retrouve dans l’un, quelques ossements dispersés, dans l’autre un crâne, dans celui-ci une plaque d’identité, dans celui-là un corps entier.

Quarante-trois contenaient des ossements ou des débris d’équipements ; deux corps étaient complets, un troisième était sans tête : deux tombes renfermaient une plaque d’identité alors que les cadavres étaient signalés comme inconnus !

Les fouilles se poursuivent ; elles mettent à nu d’autres cercueils contenant d’autres ossements et sans doute trouvera-t-on d’autres corps entier. Il n’y a aucune raison pour que qu’il en soit autrement pour les tombes des morts allemands.

Quels sont les responsables de cet ignoble sabotage ? Ils sont plusieurs. On peut déjà reprocher au délégué des familles qui devaient assister aux exhumations de n’avoir suivi les travaux que d’un œil indifférent. L’officier d’état civil qui aurait du exercer une surveillance attentive à manqué gravement à son devoir. Il doit être recherché et poursuivi. Il paraîtrait d’ailleurs, qu’il n’est plus attaché au Ministère des Pensions et qu’il réside actuellement dans un département d’outre-Méditerranée.

Enfin, si l’on cherche quel est l’entrepreneur chargé des exhumations dans ce secteur, on retrouve de même marchand de cadavres qui traduit en correctionnelle H. Xxxxx et J. Xxxxx (deux députés), coupables, selon lui, de l’avoir traité avec une sévérité qui semble pourtant justifier le découverte de Xxxxx. Décidément, les marchands de la mort ont toute honte bue !

Tout de même on ne peut tolérer de tels agissements. Il est horrible de penser que des individus ont osé saccager un cimetière et disperser les cadavres de nos malheureux camarades pour faire encaisser à un entrepreneur sans scrupules 87 fr. 50 par croix de bois enlevée.

[eairicbloodaxe]

Very interesting thread.

Personally, I find it just as poignant and emotional reading a name from a memorial like Thiepval (where the body was never found), as standing in front of a CWGC headstone. That's also the case where there's a duplicate memorial - for example in my local churchyard where the soldier really lies in a named CWGC cemetery abroad.

For me, the fact the the body is or isn't there is overtaken by the feeling that people cared enough to reflect the soldier's sacrifice with a permanent commemoration, so we may think of them today as we stand silent.

Regards

Ian

[egbert]

Just reading "The Challenge of the Dead" A vision of the war and the life of the common soldier in France, seen two years afterwards between August and November, 1920 by Stephen Graham.

Found an interesting episode about the US dead being relocated from France to the USA:

At Calais now the boxes are stacked on the quays with the embalmed American dead. At great cost of time and labour the dead soldiers are being removed from the places where they fell and packed in crates for transport to America. In this way America's sacrifice is lessened. For while in America this is considered to be America's own concern, it is certain that it is deplored in Europe. The taking away of the American dead has given the impression of a slur on the honour of lying in France. America removes her dead because of a sweet sentiment towards her own. She takes them from a more honourable resting-place to a less honourable one. It is said to be due in part to the commercial enterprise of the American undertakers, but it is more due to the sentiment of mothers and wives and provincial pastors in America. That the transference of the dead across the Atlantic is out of keeping with European sentiment she ignores, or fails to understand. America feels that she is morally superior to Europe. American soil is God's own country and the rest is comparatively unhallowed. To be one in death with Frenchmen, Italians, Negroes, Chinamen, Portuguese, does not suit her frame of mind. Of course, lack of imagination, lack of knowledge of the war and of the great [Pg 125]mix-up of the dead is natural enough at a distance of three thousand miles—the vain thought that the identity of dead bodies with human beings can be retained. As it is, the inscription on every hundredth cross in France is probably a misnomer. There never was time for meticulous care, and the dead were not always buried by full daylight or identified by other than the slightest of clues. Is it remarkable if someone receives instead of soldier son the body of a coolie from China, or if a citizen should receive what portends to be his own corpse? By risking such accidents the majesty of the dead is offended. If love desired its dead again, love should come and lift its dead with its own hands and carry it home.

[AOK4]

In my book (to be published in October) about the German cemetery of Menen, where most of the Germans were taken to from the Ypres Salient, I have a few chapters about how the German war graves were looked after since 1914.

Interestingly, in the early 50s (when the issue of concentrating the German graves into a few cemeteries came up), the Volksbund (or at leasting some of the leading people) was thinking about leaving the bodies where they were and only moving some symbolic soil to the concentration cemeteries as they thought nobody was interested in WW1 any more and the cost of moving over 100.000 bodies would be too big. In the end, the bodies were moved (also because otherwise there would have been other issues about the status of the cemeteries), but it shows how people thought.

I have also numerous examples of soldiers being buried twice (either in Menen and Germany or even twice in Menen) and whole cemeteries from which the bodies were officially reburied but none of the soldiers can be found today.

The (re-)burials after the war were a major undertaking and it is very well understandable that mistakes were made and there was even a lot of unwillingness (definitely in the case of Germans) involved (I have found examples that involve houses being built on top of war graves - both British and German, but officials decided to leave it as it was in the 1920s), but it was a massive task which was done in just a few years.

[JimSmithson]

Interestingly, in the early 50s (when the issue of concentrating the German graves into a few cemeteries came up), the Volksbund (or at leasting some of the leading people) was thinking about leaving the bodies where they were and only moving some symbolic soil to the concentration cemeteries as they thought nobody was interested in WW1 any more and the cost of moving over 100.000 bodies would be too big. In the end, the bodies were moved (also because otherwise there would have been other issues about the status of the cemeteries), but it shows how people

I am intrigued by the provenance of this statement as my work with the VdK has never hinted at such an attitude.

Jim

[johnboy]

Very interesting thread.

Personally, I find it just as poignant and emotional reading a name from a memorial like Thiepval (where the body was never found), as standing in front of a CWGC headstone. That's also the case where there's a duplicate memorial - for example in my local churchyard where the soldier really lies in a named CWGC cemetery abroad.

For me, the fact the the body is or isn't there is overtaken by the feeling that people cared enough to reflect the soldier's sacrifice with a permanent commemoration, so we may think of them today as we stand silent.

Regards

Ian

Spot on Ian. I have a relative named on Thiepval Memorial. It is enough for me to know that he lies somewhere near there and that his name is recorded for his sacrifice.

[jay dubaya]

Extract from Philip Longworth's 'The Unending Vigil - Chapter 4 - Commemorating the Missing.

　

By the time King George V spoke at Terlincthun work at the war cemeteries was progressing fast. But there was one task which the Commission had hardly begun - the commemoration of those hundreds of thousands who had died but who had no known grave. Battle conditions had too often prevented the reverent interment of the dead and the soil of Passchendaele and of the Somme especially held legions of brave men hidden.

In December 1918 Kenyon, mindful of this problem, had proposed that their names might be inscribed on tablets placed in the cemeteries nearest to the spot they were thought to have died. The places of death of airmen who had crashed behind enemy lines could rarely be ascertained and each should be commemorated near his last point of take-off. The Commission affirmed the principle that the missing should be commemorated, but did not immediately decide the form the memorials should take. Kipling's exposition of the Commission's policy, in The Graves of the Fallen, merely gave the assurance 'that the dead who have no known resting-place will be made equal with the others'.

The result was a flood of letters from relatives, 'panicking', as Kipling put it, 'to know what will be done about the missing dead'. Many, including the Australian Prime Minister, wanted a headstone for each missing man but Ware was against this. 'We have always opposed anything that might lead to relatives to imagine a body was buried when it was not there.' There would be all sorts of misunderstandings if ever exhumation became necessary. The veracity of actual graves might even be called into question. Although the Commission allowed erection of temporary wooden crosses to men without identified burial places until some permanent scheme had been carried out, it set its face firmly against South African and Australian calls for what Kipling termed 'false graves'.

The thought that the headstones were just markers was clearly in the minds of many post Armistice. For some perhaps the endless names that were commemorated on the Memorials to the Missing had also been offered a nameless headstone near to where they fell and as the concept of no bodies buried beneath these markers had already be born perhaps it carried on into local lore.

I recently collated a short military history to a man remembered on the Thiepval Memorial, it was interesting to note that his family today believed that he was buried beneath the memorial with all the others whose name appeared on the panels above, the concept that there may never have a burial for him had never entered their thoughts nor that he may be buried in a 'Known unto God' grave, the family believed that all the graves were named and that all the bodies that could not be identified were buried beneath the Memorials to the Missing, when I explained that Pozieres BC contained thousands of un-named graves the family were taken aback, it was hard to explain the reasons why some may be missing and many of them for ever. It was a very emotional conversation and one I had not prepared for, but enlightening into what people believe or want to believe, the family told me that the information had been passed through the years by the soldiers uncle and why would they think any different,

It's almost 100 years since the Great War and many generations have had little or no knowledge of what happened when the war ended and the massive task of clearing the war zones began. My daughter suprised her history teacher in year 8 with what see knew about the war dead and why there are so many missing. Whilst the war is covered in the school sylabus I think the aspect of commemoration is lacking.

[Guest]

Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer - Wednesday 29 October 1924

Paris Tuesday

A scandalous state of affairs in connection with the salvage work in the "red zone" as the site of the famous French battlefields is known, is alleged in the "Petit Parisien" today. Two arrests have already been made, and others will follow.

The facts, according to the "Petit Parisien" are as follows:- The return to agricultural use of the soil of battlefields such as those of Craonne, Bourconville, California, the Chemin des Dames, The Abbaye de Vauclerc, etc being impossible, the State has sold to contractors the right to search these areas for metal, and the contractors are employing a crowd of workers of all nationalities, but particularly Poles, Portuguese, Arabs and Chinese, to seek for steel, iron and copper that lies buried in the ground.

These colonies of workmen, it is stated, are living under conditions reminiscent of the wild west. Their researches bring to light many skeletons of French, English, Italian, and German victims of the war, whose bones are carelessly dispersed after everything of value has been taken from them. The workmen are paid for the amount of metal they recover, and it is alleged that they spend their gains in dissipation. An instance is given of two Arabs who discovered near Laon several tons of shell cases, for which they received ten thousand francs. By the following day they had spent the whole sum.-Central News.

Mike

[Kitchener's Bugle]

Medals, a flag and a slouch hat adorn the coffin of Private John Hunter. Pte Hunter was one of five Australian World War I soldiers re-interred at Buttes New British Cemetery in Belgium.

The remains of soldiers are still being found and advances in DNA are enabling identification of the men from living relatives.

The point is... men are still being buried in CWG Cemeteries.