The Village, BBC1 9pm Easter Sunday

[Steven Broomfield]

Misery? More like pure blind rage.

[KGB]

One heard that bodies were not repatriated as there were so many the whole futility and waste would have caused an uprising (remember Red Clydeside) therefore all left abroad

[phil andrade]

Not to mention the fact that virtually half the dead were unrecovered or unidentifiable.

I think that might have been stressed in the story : the notion of obliteration of the body - or of the dead being left to rot - was not mentioned, and I imagine that would have been a traumatic thing for the people of those times to countenance.

Phil (PJA)

[Pighills]

To be fair Phil, a lot of things weren't mentioned (lice, fleas, rats, mud etc, etc, etc).

[Andy Wade]

Actually lice were mentioned because Joe brought them home with him on his first leave. Bert was complaining and scratching himself, blaming Joe for it.

[KGB]

Why isn't more pressure put on the govt to identify the "unknowns"? A few years back Peter Barton found 100,000+ cards all indexed at Red Cross HQ in Geneva but Came**n does not think it worthwhile to spend a few quid getting names on headstones. Royal Wootton Bassett-itis?

[Pighills]

Actually lice were mentioned because Joe brought them home with him on his first leave. Bert was complaining and scratching himself, blaming Joe for it.

You are, of course right, I'd forgotten!

[phil andrade]

Yes, and there was some pretty harrowing and compelling narrative about clouds of bluebottles, coils of intestines and the indignities of death while caught " with one's trousers down", so to speak.

I retain a very positive view of this series, and commend it as way above the normal standard. There are quibbles, of course.

Edit : To elaborate further on my earlier post, I would ask how many of the folks on the homefront cherished the expectation that their men had been decently buried, and that repatriation was feasible ? Surely, a very high proportion of the dead were initially posted as " missing" : it would take quite a long time before death - or its presumption - was confirmed officially. I think that the drama would have been enhanced - without the slightest hint of hyperbole, and with none of the usual caricature or exagerration - if Juliet Stevenson's son had alluded to the dreadful numbers of bodies that could not be found, let alone identified. That poor lady who insisted that she was going to bring back her boy....at that juncture an announcement would have been appropriate, and very effective in its impact on the tragic theme of the story.

Phil (PJA)

[jon_armstrong]

Edit : To elaborate further on my earlier post, I would ask how many of the folks on the homefront cherished the expectation that their men had been decently buried, and that repatriation was feasible ? Surely, a very high proportion of the dead were initially posted as " missing" : it would take quite a long time before death - or its presumption - was confirmed officially. I think that the drama would have been enhanced - without the slightest hint of hyperbole, and with none of the usual caricature or exagerration - if Juliet Stevenson's son had alluded to the dreadful numbers of bodies that could not be found, let alone identified. That poor lady who insisted that she was going to bring back her boy....at that juncture an announcement would have been appropriate, and very effective in its impact on the tragic theme of the story.

Perhaps I'm mixing up the chronology as I was doing other things and had only half an eye on it, but I thought that this was kind of nipped in the bud when in the bath house the Methodist minister's daughter finally admitted that she knew how he died. I think her recounting of the tale happened off camera and they were just sitting in glum silence afterwards. Unless I'm misremembering I don't think there was any talk of bringing back the bodies after that, and I took it to mean he was blown to nothing, sunk into a muddy shell hole, left for dead in a German trench or something equally nasty that drove the point home.

[John_Hartley]

Why isn't more pressure put on the govt to identify the "unknowns"?

Because of the sheer impracticality of doing so.

[Magnumbellum]

One heard that bodies were not repatriated as there were so many the whole futility and waste would have caused an uprising (remember Red Clydeside), therefore all left abroad

This and similar comments, in implying that there was serious official consideration of repatriating the bodies, by the authorities at public expense, but it was formally decided against, miss the point I was trying to make in my earlier post. There was no tradition or precedent for bringing the bodies home en masse. There was a centuries old tradition that bodies were buried essentially where they lay, maybe with some tidying up and memorialising in more peaceful times. There was certainly no such discussion after WW2, and I have yet to hear of evidence that there was any formal discussion after WW1.

There seems to be a tendency to extrapolate backwards from modern times, whereas in WW1 and WW2 itself there was the stoic acceptance, as Rupert Brooke poignantly put it, "that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England. There shall be in that rich earth some richer dust concealed". He clearly never expected to be repatriated, and I have never heard him criticised for acknowledging this.

Incidentally, in terms of the logistics, if mass repatriation had been seriously contemplated, Brooke is a reminder that bringing bodies from France was only part of it - Gallipoli, Egyot, East Africa ...

No, the discussion was not about repatriation, but about establishing and maintaining cemeteries, leading to the CWGC, and erecting national and local memorials in the UK.

[Stoppage Drill]

the indignities of death while caught " with one's trousers down", so to speak.

Phil (PJA)

Always ready to respond to a "fundamental" observation - Kipling wrote of this in his "Epitaphs of War"

"I was of delicate mind. I stepped aside for my needs,

Disdaining the common office. I was seen from afar and killed . . .

How is this matter for mirth ? Let each man be judged by his deeds.

I have paid my price to live with myself on the terms that I willed."