clearing no man's land

[Guest sammy]

I was intrigued to learn from a radio interview with the daughter of a WWI vetran that her father was employed, post war, to return as a civilian to help clear no man's land of remaining bodies. Whilst doing this he was shot by a sniper and received serious injuries. Apparently, there was a number of deranged individuals, in 1919/20, who thought the war was still on and, still hiding in no man's land, were often responsible for this type of incident.

I have never heard of this before and would like to know more about this.

[burlington]

I don't know about civilians clearing the battlefield. I have always thought that this was done by squads of servicemen.

As to the sniping, there are many reports of bandits of all nationalities operating in the 'badlands' i.e the desolated and wasted land which the war left behind. There is a relevant posting from me previously but I can't find it!

I can't speak for the whole world but I would have thought that the scenario of people holding out post war, as is said to have happened in the Pacific post 1945, is unlikely on the Western Front because of the topography and the desire for the displaced inhabitants to retrun and to pick up their lives.

[egbert]

Yes there was a good thread on that subject before. In France the clearing of the battlefield was conducted under the authority of "Etat Civile", a French Government agency. The French post war army could not deal with this enormous task, so there were lots of civilians employed and of course the majority of German prisoners, those who did not work underground in the mines were forced to clear up. I believe they worked until 1920; the total battlefield clearance actually went on and on for years. At the occasion of my last Somme visit the warden of Ulster Tower told me of (post war) rival wars between gangs in the Schwaben Redoubt Area ; it was a gang war about ressources; you could make a fortune by collecting the precious metals and materiels...

[andigger]

Apparently, there was a number of deranged individuals, in 1919/20, who thought the war was still on and, still hiding in no man's land, were often responsible for this type of incident.

I heard about this before in WWII, specifically the Pacfic, but how could men... even the derranged... not know the fighting was over by 1920? At least in the Pacific they were isolated on islands... on the western fron they would be much closer to civilization.

Andy

[Tim Birch]

Although it stretched for about 400 miles, the actual width of the devatated battle zone no-man's land was only a few hundred yards on average. (I am refering to the areas of land where the fighting remained virtually static; the areas of open movement seen in 1914 and 1918 were not churned up and devastated anything like to the same extent). This means that it would have been difficult for individuals to remain hiding out in the area for any length of time. They would also have needed a supply of food and water.

What is more likely, and I understand did ocur, both during the war and for sometime afterwards was for deserters (mainly French) to live rough in the large forests of France often hundreds of miles away from the battle areas. Here such men could get food and support from sympathisers (including wives or gilfriends) for long periods of time.

Some of the French forests are vast, and the authorities did not have the manpower of inclination to spend much effort thying to route such people out, bearing in mind that the number involved was comparatively small.

Tim