Battlefield recovery of dead soldiers

[Lancashire Fusilier]

Question: including his revolver that he had purchased prior to going to France. If it survived would it have gone to his regiment to be dispersed amongst fellow officers ?

Tony

Tony,

Some officers had private purchase firearms of various types, and many had the service issue Webley revolver.

In a combat situation, it could happen that a firearm from a fallen officer would be picked up and used by another member of the regiment including ORs.

In the attached photograph of soldiers of the Worcestershire Regiment in action, we can see one of the soldiers is carrying a Webley Mk.VI revolver.

As the soldier is not wearing a revolver case/holster, and the revolver's lanyard is just hanging loose, the possibilities are, that the soldier was either given the revolver by a wounded officer, the soldier retrieved it from a fallen officer, or the soldier found it on the battlefield.

Regards,

LF

[Tom Tulloch-Marshall]

... Question: As he was an officer what would have happened to his kit that he was wearing at the time - including his revolver that he had purchased prior to going to France. If it survived would it have gone to his regiment to be dispersed amongst fellow officers ? ...

As he was an officer his kit, in theory, should have been returned to his next of kin by Messrs Cox & Co. It is quite usual to see lists of personal effects and correspondence about kit returns in officer's service files at TNA.

Tom

[Tony Ring]

Thank you for your responses.

Very little was sent back to my Great Uncles widow in the UK so I presume his kit was either dispersed or did not survive.

Tony

[Moonraker]

Thanks for all the above information.

Last December I started

this thread

about Robert Ryan's book, Dead Man's Land. (I'll post a review when I've finished reading it. It's not that I'm a slow reader; I only got a copy earlier this month.)

In it, a VAD member says that in "the early days, when the war was still much like a game between gentlemen, we volunteers asked permission to collect the dead from the battlefield. The local German commander, rather a nice chap, said that if we wore bright headscarves, then we would not be mistaken for soldiers and the snipers would spare us. And so it proved ... The Germans were as good as their commander's word. Anyone who even nicked one of us had hell to pay from their own side."

OK, it's a novel, but Ryan has obviously done some intensive research and likes to introduce this sort of thing as proof.

Moonraker

[Lancashire Fusilier]

In it, a VAD member says that in "the early days, when the war was still much like a game between gentlemen, we volunteers asked permission to collect the dead from the battlefield. The local German commander, rather a nice chap, said that if we wore bright headscarves, then we would not be mistaken for soldiers and the snipers would spare us.

Moonraker

Moonraker,

Whilst there were VAD ( Voluntary Aid Detachment ) male volunteers, they were also often female, who would for example, work as ambulance drivers close to the Front, and that maybe is where the reference to wearing bright headscarves comes in ? although I have not heard of VADs doing that sort of work at the front line trenches.

However, it is documented, that particularly in the early part of the war, truces were arranged to enable both sides to attend to the wounded and collect their dead.

Regards,

LF

[Moonraker]

I should have specified that it was a female VAD member.

Moonraker

[Lancashire Fusilier]

I should have specified that it was a female VAD member.

Moonraker

VAD volunteers would often be females, that I why I doubt that in the context of that type of truce, female VAD being used, as those truces would typically involve troops from both sides getting out of their front line trenches and going into ' No Man's Land ' to collect their dead and wounded.

LF

[Lancashire Fusilier]

Here are some accounts from those involved in truces on Gallipoli to recover the wounded and bury the dead, such truces being the same as those arranged on the Western Front.

As these were on the front line, and involved recovery from No Man's Land, you will see why VAD Volunteers could not, and would not have been involved.

During these Gallipoli truces, white arm-bands were worn by those taking part, as can be seen from the attached photograph taken during a burial and recovery truce.

LF

" By the first week in May 1915, the Anzac line along this ridge had been fairly well established. The Battle of the Landing had temporarily exhausted both sides. Moreover, the landing had failed, for neither the Anzacs nor the British force at Helles had been able to capture the southern part of the Gallipoli peninsula. That had been the whole point of the invasion – to get through to the Dardanelles and silence the Turkish batteries guarding that waterway. Then the Royal Navy, the theory went, could steam on up to Istanbul and terrify Turkey out of the war.

As the Anzacs worked to consolidate their positions, the Turkish commanders planned to drive them from the ridge and back to the sea. They considered the position along Second Ridge as the most vulnerable to attack for here their enemies clung precariously to positions just off the steep slopes of Monash Valley just on the other side of the road opposite Johnston's Jolly. One mighty rush of infantry could send them reeling back down into the valley and once the Turks commanded the whole ridge evacuation would be inevitable. So, on 18 May approximately 42,000 Turkish soldiers were massed in the valleys to the east. But aircraft of the Royal Naval Air Service, flying out of Imroz Island as observation planes for Royal Navy warships, spotted them. At 3.00 am on 19 May, well before dawn, the Anzac trenches well fully manned and awake all along the line in the expectation of a Turkish attack.

Shortly after 3.00 am, the glinting bayonets of Turkish soldiers were observed in the clear night moving in the valley between where you are standing at the Jolly and the next ridge to the north, German Officer’s Ridge. The Australians began firing and by mid-morning had poured 948,000 rifle and machine gun bullets into waves of attacking Turks all along the Anzac line but especially here at 400 Plateau, at German Officer’s and on up the ridge towards Quinn’s Post. One Australian likened the whole event to a ‘wallaby drive’ where the enemy were ‘shot down in droves’ while another talked of how they had stood virtually on top of their trenches ‘shooting as fast as they could’ until gun barrels became too hot to touch. Bean’s words capture the scene in this area by mid-morning 19 May 1915:

… the dead and wounded lay everywhere in hundreds. Many of those nearest to the Anzac line had been shattered by the terrible wounds inflicted by modern bullets at short ranges. No sound came from that terrible space; but here and there some wounded or dying man, silently lying without help or any hope of it under the sun which glared from a cloudless sky, turned painfully from one side to the other, or slowly raised an arm towards heaven.

[Charles Bean,

The Story of Anzac

, Vol 2, p 161]

Approximately 3,000 Turks had been killed and another 7,000 wounded. The Anzacs, by comparison, lost 160 killed and 468 wounded. While the Anzacs had been unable to push forward against the Turks, the failure of this attack indicated that the Anzac line would not fall to a rush of infantry against rifles and machine guns. After 19 May the Anzac soldiers began to see the Turks as fellow sufferers and respect for their courage and prowess grew.

Within days of the attack the air was heavy with the smell of rotting corpses. A truce was arranged between 7.00 am and 4.30 pm on 24 May to allow both sides to bury their dead. Prominent in the organisation of the truce was a British officer, Captain Aubrey Herbert, attached to the staff of the Australian and New Zealand Division. On the morning of 24 May, Herbert met and accompanied Turkish officers up the ridge from the beach to 400 Plateau. He found the sight between the trenches and in the gullies ‘indescribable’. So awful was the stench that a Turkish ‘Red Crescent’ official gave him antiseptic wool with scent to put over his nose. The scent was ‘renewed frequently’. A Turkish officer said to Herbert:

At this spectacle even the most gentle must feel savage, and the most savage must weep.

Continuing on up the ridge, Herbert saw for himself the full effect of the Anzac bullets:

They [Turkish dead] fill the myrtle-grown gullies. One saw the result of machine-gun fire very clearly: entire companies annihilated – not wounded, but killed, their heads doubled under them with the impetus of their rush and both hands clasping their bayonets. It was as if God had breathed in their faces …

[Aubrey Herbert,

Mons, Anzac and Kut

, Hutchinson & Co, 1930]

[Lancashire Fusilier]

Additional Gallipoli accounts :-

" Nauseating work

I will never forget the armistice – it was a day of hard, smelly, nauseating work. Those of us assigned to pick up the bodies had to pair up and bring the bodies in on stretchers to where the graves were being dug. First we had to cut the cord of the identification disks and record the details on a sheet of paper we were provided with. Some of the bodies were rotted so much that there were only bones and part of the uniform left. The bodies of the men killed on the nineteenth ( it had now been five days ) were awful. Most of us had to work in short spells as we felt very ill. We found a few of our men who had been killed in the first days of the landing.

This whole operation was a strange experience – here we were, mixing with our enemies, exchanging smiles and cigarettes, when the day before we had been tearing each other to pieces. Apart from the noise of the grave-diggers and the padres reading the burial services, it was mostly silent. There was no shelling, no rifle-fire. Everything seemed so quiet and strange. Away to our left there were high table-topped hills and on these were what looked like thousands of people. Turkish civilians had taken advantage of the cease-fire to come out and watch the burial. Although they were several miles from us they could be clearly seen.

The burial job was over by mid-afternoon and we retired back to our trenches. Then, sometime between four and five o’clock, rifle-fire started again and then the shelling. We were at it once more.

[Albert Facey,

A Fortunate Life

, Ringwood, 1984, p.268]

As if God had breathed in their faces

We were at the rendezvous on the beach at 6.30. Heavy rain soaked us to the skin. At 7.30 we met the Turks, Miralai Izzedin, a pleasant, rather sharp, little man; Arif, the son of Achmet Pasha, who gave me a card, “Sculpteur et Peintre,” and “Etudiant de Poesie.” I saw Sahib and had a few words with him but he did not come with us. Fahreddin Bey came later. We walked from the sea and passed immediately up the hill, through a field of tall corn filled with poppies, then another cornfield; then the fearful smell of death began as we came upon scattered bodies. We mounted over a plateau and down through gullies filled with thyme, where there lay about 4000 Turkish dead. It was indescribable. One was grateful for the rain and the grey sky. A Turkish Red Crescent man came and gave me some antiseptic wool with scent on it, and this they renewed frequently. There were two wounded crying in that multitude of silence. The Turks were distressed, and Skeen strained a point to let them send water to the first wounded man, who must have been a sniper crawling home. I walked over to the second, who lay with a high circle of dead that made a mound round him, and gave him a drink from my water-bottle, but Skeen called me to come on and I had to leave the bottle. Later a Turk gave it back to me. The Turkish captain with me said: “At this spectacle even the most gentle must feel savage, and the most savage must weep.” The dead fill acres of ground , mostly killed in the one big attack, bit some recently. They fill the myrtle-grown gullies. One saw the result of machine-gun fire very clearly; entire companies annihilated - - not wounded, but killed, their heads doubled under them with the impetus of their rush and both hands clasping their bayonets, It was as if God had breathed in their faces, as “the Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold.”

The burying was finished some time before the end. There were certain tricks to both sides. Our men and the Turks began fraternizing, exchanging badges, etc. I had to keep them apart. At 4 o’clock the Turks came to me for orders. I do not believe this could have happened anywhere else. I retired their troops and ours, walking along the line. At 4.17 I retired the white-flag men, making them shake hands with our men. Then I came to the upper end. About a dozen Turks came out. I chaffed them, and said that they would shoot me the next day. They said, in a horrified chorus: “God forbid!” The Albanians laughed and cheered, and said: “We will never shoot you.” Then the Australians began coming up, and said: “Good-bye old chap; good luck!” And the Turks said: “Oghur Ola gule gule gedejekseniz, gule gule gelejekseniz” (“Smiling may you go and smiling come again”). Then I told them all to get into their trenches, and unthinkingly went up to the Turkish trench and got a deep salaam from it. I told them that neither side would fire for twenty-five minutes after they had got into the trenches. One Turk was seen out away on our left, but there was nothing to be done, and I think he was all right. A couple of the rifles had gone off about twenty minutes before the end but Potts and I went hurriedly to and fro seeing it was all right. At last we dropped into our trenches, glad that the strain was over. I walked back with Temperley. I got some raw whisky for the infection in my throat, and iodine for where the barbed wire had torn my feet. There was a hush over the Peninsular.

[Stoppage Drill]

The last page of ch 12 ("Review at Dusk") of "First Day on the Somme" (Middlebrook, 1971) contains an account of the truce at Gommecourt. Middlebrook met or corresponded with nearly 600 survivors of the battle during his research in the late 60s and very early 70s, and he attributes much of the material relating to the Gommecourt truce to a Gefreiter Hugo van Egeren, 55th Reserve Inf Regt.

Interestingly, whilst allowing the British to recover dead and wounded, it seems that the Germans were nipping out and collecting Lewis guns.

[Guest]

On 2013-10-26 at 15:54, Lancashire Fusilier said:

Apparently so, as most of the photographs of burials carried out by both the British themselves or by the Germans, show the bodies minus their boots.

Regards,

LF

I just read an interesting document that said sometimes the fallen soldiers identity could be narrowed down by the manufacturers mark and year stamped inside the boots 

[johnboy]

I would be surprised if they were. Some men could have got boots from another man, some used from a store. Who made them would not be helpful.

The main items for ID seem to have been dog tag, paybook anything with name or number or regiment. But it depends if you are referring to bodies found after the war or actually on the battlefield. Most bodies found after the war and reinterred had probably had id removed  at the time of original burial. 

[Khaki]

1 hour ago, Elaine Cash said:

I just read an interesting document that said sometimes the fallen soldiers identity could be narrowed down by the manufacturers mark and year stamped inside the boots 

If boots even remained, a valuable piece of equipment particularly to the Germans, frequently taken from the dead

khaki

[thetrenchrat22]

Reading some of the concentration reports on the CWGC website.  I have noted a number of the identification's had been made by boots, groundsheets, knifes, forks and spoons With a capbadge, numerial also found on the body.  Sometimes were the number is only found with nothing else to suggest a regiment the remains as an unknown soldier