German cemeteries on the Western Front

[AliceF]

8 hours ago, egbert said:

We are again at the point of discussion from the 2014 thread

 

Thanks for posting this link to the 2014 thread, Egbert.

 

 

2 hours ago, trajan said:

 

Coming back to numbers killed on the western front,

 

I am wondering as well. How many missing are there and where would they be? If the 900.000 German burial in German VDK cemeteries in Belgium and France is an accepted figure and the 1.5 mio. dead German soldiers at the Western front another figure ( which I understand is discussable), then there would be still several 100,000 missing. ( Well aware that many of the missing in the Verlustenlisten would be buried unidentified soldiers). Either they are in ossuaries or still on the former  battlefields? Any other options? Some in German cemeteries in Germany maybe, some in British cemeteries. But that would not make up such a large number, I would think.

 

Christine

[AliceF]

P.s. Some links: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Front_(World_War_I) -

 

https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/war_losses_germany

 

But I am not the one who can evaluate the sources.

 

Christine

 

[phil andrade]

3 hours ago, trajan said:

Coming back to numbers killed on the western front, has anyone ever done the hard graft of adding up the figures listed in the regular German casualty lists? They show KIA and missing and surely would be pretty accurate up to the last month or so of the war.

 

The lists were properly authoratitive but they were about half a million short by the end of the war : there was too much going on for the clerks to keep up with it all.

 

By the end of 1918, about six and a half million German casualties had been registered.  By the time things had been assessed a decade or so later, that figure was raised to rather more than seven million.

 

Not only were the total casualties increased by that half million : the preponderance of them were deaths, the principal reason being that so many men who had been posted as missing were finally confirmed dead. Thus the 1.6 million deaths tabulated by the Armistice were raised to two million.

 

It was a matter of conjecture as to what proportion of those several hundred thousand  extra deaths should be attributed to the Western Front ; four fifths was Churchill's guess.  He arrived at a figure of 1,494,000 for German deaths from the war in France and Belgium.  This was after his research team had collaborated with their German counterparts in the reichsarciv. It's not a figure that can be verified, but it's a reasonable estimate and one that will stand up to a degree of scrutiny.

 

The mistake that people tend to make is that they conflate the missing German bodies with the numbers posted as missing in the casualty lists. Huge  numbers of German soldiers were confirmed as killed, their bodies identified and recovered for burial, and, having been decently interred, their graves were lost or destroyed during and after the war.  These men were not counted as missing : they were known to be dead and had been counted as such.  But their remains were unrecovered : in excess of half a million of them in France and Flanders, perhaps....unless we countenance the suggestion that the best part of one hundred thousand of them are interred in the ossuary at Verdun, and maybe others in ossuaries elsewhere.

 

Phil

[AOK4]

There are several large ossuaries in France, f.i. Ferme de Navarin on the Champagne front. Contrary to the British, France decided to gather unknown remains in ossuaires (in separate monuments or in mass graves on cemeteries). This same thing they did for the Germans as well (as they were responsible for the German graves after the Versailles Treaty). I am sure that even the nationality of plenty of these unknown remains couldn't be ascertained.

 

I would say that the remains in the ossuaire at Kemmel are mainly French, as in Belgium a more strict division between German and other remains was at least tried to be upheld. However, certain sectors in Belgium were cleared by other countries' graves services f.i. the French in the Kemmel area and in the Lys-Scheldt area (Waregem). They may have worked along the same principles as in France.

 

Jan

[phil andrade]

Thanks for this clarification , Jan.

 

A crucial feature is that French graves in military cemeteries are all identified? No equivalent to the Commonwealth  A SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAT, KNOWN UNTO GOD  ?

 

If you're French, it's either identified cross or ossuary : no compromise .

 

The question of precise numbers is a challenge : why does Kemmel specify 5,257 , and Notre Dame de Lorrette 19,998, while Verdun varies from 75,000 to 150,000 ?  Now I see the figure has been raised to 155,000.

 

Obviously, the remit was different for Verdun from that of the other two.

 

Reading accounts from the soldiers, I cannot help but notice how much more determined to " tidy up" the Germans were.

 

They certainly deplored the French habit of leaving so many of their dead to rot ; and comments from the German High Command make the same kind of remarks about what they found around Passchendaele in the spring of 1918....so the British were seen as remiss in this regard, too.  The story of the Fromelles battle, and the Pheasant Wood burial saga, reinforces this impression.

 

This might well reflect the fact that armies determined to expel the invader are reluctant to tidy up because - whether it's burying dead or constructing elaborate trenches - anything that encourages staying put implies acceptance of status quo.  The invading army has a vested interest in consolidating and clearing up, because it sends out the message to its own soldiers - and the enemy's - that it's here to stay.

 

 

 

 

 

I think - but cannot find sources to verify - that the actual number of German burials in the Verdun sector exceeds that of their French counterparts .  This despite the higher number of French dead there.  The inference is that the French  resorted to the ossuary for their own dead as a matter of course,  while the Germans were determined - as far as circumstances allowed - to secure burial for their soldiers, whether they were known or unknown..  If all the French dead in the huge cemetery in front of Douamont are given named graves, that will lend weight to what I'm suggesting.

 

Writing of Verdn's ossuary, Ian Ousby in his THE ROAD TO VERDUN, page 268 tells us :

 

 The number of these anonymous dead runs perhaps to 75,000, perhaps to150,000, depending on which tourist brochure or guide book you read. Most of them remember to specify that all the bones are French.

 

Forgive me if I repeat things that were written in 2014.

 

2014 ?  Blimey !  Time flies, doesn't it ?

 

Phil

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 9 August , 2017 by phil andrade

[Stoppage Drill]

18 hours ago, phil andrade said:

 

 

Are there other ossuaries that the French constructed for their dead from the Great War ?  I would have thought that the Champagne battlefields would have required at least one.

 

Phil

 

 

 

Ferme de Navarin

[phil andrade]

1 hour ago, Stoppage Drill said:

 

Ferme de Navarin

 

Thanks.

 

Jan had mentioned that one, too.

 

About ten thousand - supposedly French.

 

A small number for such a monstrous killing ground.  The French lost as many  men killed in Champagne in ten days in September - October 1915 as they lost in ten weeks at the height of the Verdun fighting in 1916.

 

Here's another citation from a book on my shelf that picques my interest :

 

From Stephane Audoin - Rouzeau and Annette Becker 1914-1918. UNDERSTANDING THE GREAT WAR, footnote , page 193

 

 Until recently, the largest and most symbolic French ossuary, Douaumont , was supposed to contain only precious French remains : this was obviously not the case. 

 

This work was published in 2002.

 

Phil

 

 

 

 

Edited 9 August , 2017 by phil andrade

[Guest]

We the Welsh Guards Pilgrims held  a commemoration service (the brick square behind us lie 25000 German Soldiers)    a German Officer at this cemetery joined us the translation to his speech

"My dear gentleman, it surprised us to meet you here at Langemark. For over one hundred years, young people from your countries and from my country have fallen here and now lie here in Flanders. We have the luck that we, in our generation, can live in peace with each other, and must no longer be sent by others to fight each other. 

I can say that I feel very grateful to have met you on the path you follow to honour your comrades of yesterday. I can also tell you than in Germany there is great respect for what the British soliders achieved."

[phil andrade]

1 hour ago, prycopyn said:

We the Welsh Guards Pilgrims held  a commemoration service (the brick square behind us lie 25000 German Soldiers)    a German Officer at this cemetery joined us the translation to his speech

"My dear gentleman, it surprised us to meet you here at Langemark. For over one hundred years, young people from your countries and from my country have fallen here and now lie here in Flanders. We have the luck that we, in our generation, can live in peace with each other, and must no longer be sent by others to fight each other. 

I can say that I feel very grateful to have met you on the path you follow to honour your comrades of yesterday. I can also tell you than in Germany there is great respect for what the British soliders achieved."

 

Lovely post,  especially as it marks your debut on the forum.

 

Thanks !

 

Phil

[AliceF]

17 hours ago, phil andrade said:

The mistake that people tend to make is that they conflate the missing German bodies with the numbers posted as missing in the casualty lists. Huge  numbers of German soldiers were confirmed as killed, their bodies identified and recovered for burial, and, having been decently interred, their graves were lost or destroyed during and after the war.  These men were not counted as missing : they were known to be dead and had been counted as such.  But their remains were unrecovered : in excess of half a million of them in France and Flanders, perhaps....unless we countenance the suggestion that the best part of one hundred thousand of them are interred in the ossuary at Verdun, and maybe others in ossuaries elsewhere.

 

 

Is it more likely to assume that the remains of up to half a million German soldiers are resting in their original graves where grave location has got lost than to assume that they are resting in ossuaries? Even if huge numbers were buried, I assume a considerable number must have been missing = died and remains not found (see for example those that were declared dead). In France there are also at least 188.000 soldiers buried in VDK cemeteries, who are not identified (found unburied or (re-)buried and information about identity got lost).

 

Christine

[phil andrade]

Yes, surely the numbers in ossuaries are only a fraction of the " lost " German bodies...and maybe a very small fraction at that.

 

I would guess that a large part of the notional half million were never given decent burial : tossed into shell holes by the enemy and left to the mercy of the elements and indiscriminate artillery fire.

 

Editing here : I have just revisited my personal message folder, and found a message from someone personally involved in the recovery of dead from the Flanders battlefields.  In his own experience, he was involved in the recovery of nineteen more or less complete skeletal  bodies over the last decade.  Of these, fifteen were German, three British and one Australian.  This might serve as an indication of the extent to which German dead were abandoned in the battlefield clearances, even though it's very clear that the Germans themselves did a great deal to inter the dead - enemy as well as their own - when the war was raging.

 

Phil

 

 

Edited 9 August , 2017 by phil andrade

[Michael Pegum]

I am interested in the Menen German war cemetery. In the Wikipedia entry, it says "Around the chapel are eight tombstones, bearing the names and locations of the 53 cemeteries, from where the fallen were transferred." Is there anywhere I could find out which ones they were? I particularly want to know if the graves from Moorsele (see image) were transferred to the Menen cemetery. The names on the numbered grave markers are: 1 - Reuber; 2 - Thalheim; 3 - Kayser. The area shown, at the east end of Sint-Maartenskerk, Moorsele, is now a car park.

 

Michael

 

[AOK4]

8 hours ago, Michael Pegum said:

I am interested in the Menen German war cemetery. In the Wikipedia entry, it says "Around the chapel are eight tombstones, bearing the names and locations of the 53 cemeteries, from where the fallen were transferred." Is there anywhere I could find out which ones they were? I particularly want to know if the graves from Moorsele (see image) were transferred to the Menen cemetery. The names on the numbered grave markers are: 1 - Reuber; 2 - Thalheim; 3 - Kayser. The area shown, at the east end of Sint-Maartenskerk, Moorsele, is now a car park.

 

Michael

 

 

Hello,

 

I have written a book about Menen listing all cemeteries that were transferred there (it's in Dutch though). I have also written an elaborate article about the cemeteries of the commune of Wevelgem (to which Moorsele belongs). The graves from Moorsele were transferred to Menen around 1930.

 

Jan

[LDT006]

9 hours ago, Michael Pegum said:

I am interested in the Menen German war cemetery. In the Wikipedia entry, it says "Around the chapel are eight tombstones, bearing the names and locations of the 53 cemeteries, from where the fallen were transferred." Is there anywhere I could find out which ones they were? I particularly want to know if the graves from Moorsele (see image) were transferred to the Menen cemetery. The names on the numbered grave markers are: 1 - Reuber; 2 - Thalheim; 3 - Kayser. The area shown, at the east end of Sint-Maartenskerk, Moorsele, is now a car park.

 

You can use the "namelist" from the in flanders fields museum to check where they are buried now, use "Soldatenfriedhof Menen" :

http://www.inflandersfields.be/en/namelist/searchname 

There are multiple results for the 3 names at Menen, you need first name or date of death.

Franz Neu is visible on your photo and this are the details for him;

 

 

Hope this helps,

Luc.

 

[Michael Pegum]

3 hours ago, AOK4 said:

Hello,

I have written a book about Menen listing all cemeteries that were transferred there (it's in Dutch though). I have also written an elaborate article about the cemeteries of the commune of Wevelgem (to which Moorsele belongs). The graves from Moorsele were transferred to Menen around 1930.

Jan

 

Jan, the reason for my interest is that Captain Robert Maxwell Pike, R.F.C., "was shot down in mortal combat and buried in a churchyard behind our lines with full military honours", according to a message dropped on the British airfield at St. Omer by Lt. Theo Osterkamp. Pike was shot down by Oberlt Alfred Ritscher and Lt. Heinrich Maas, operating from Moorsele airfield, over Polygon Wood. Men from Moorsele airfield were buried near Sint-Martinuskerk in Moorsele (see image, but this is not his funeral), and this church is unchanged today, but the churchyard has disappeared.

 

My theory is that Pike was buried in the churchyard at Moorsele, alongside German airmen, and that his remains were transferred to the Menen cemetery. Do you think that is possible? If it was not until 1930 that the bodies were transferred, the grave marker might have deteriorated, and the inscription become illegible..

 

Michael

 

Edited 24 August , 2017 by Michael Pegum

[Michael Pegum]

2 hours ago, LDT006 said:

You can use the "namelist" from the in flanders fields museum to check where they are buried now, use "Soldatenfriedhof Menen" .

Hope this helps,

Luc.

 

 

 

Thanks very much for that information, Luc,

 

There are 47,407 names in that list, and it looks as if it is possible to look at only 20 at a time. The name 'Pike' does not show up on the name search, but I want to look at the whole list to see if there is a possible mis-spelling. Is it possible to download the whole list to a spreadsheet? Also, is it possible to separate out those transferred from Moorsele?

 

Michael

[AOK4]

I have the old list of Moorsele, I'll check it out. The British graves from the churchyard (German plot) were transferred to Moorseele row 1A graves 4 to 6. There were 4 airmen (Spicer & Carbert and Mackay & Halliwell) and one Canadian (Alexander) buried on the churchyard. I don't remember any other unknowns there (or British graves).

 

When was Pike killed?

[AOK4]

Hello,

 

No trace of the man in Moorsele.

 

See: https://www.luchtvaartgeschiedenis.be/content/dh-2-4732-te-zonnebeke-het-prototype

 

On the website of the Red Cross there are some clues indicating he was buried in the area in a field grave (supported by the picture of the grave on the other website): https://grandeguerre.icrc.org/en/File/Details/4966300/3/2/

 

His body may have been transferred to a German concentration cemetery in the area later in 1915-1916 (which is very likely but the grave marker may have been destroyed by that time).

 

Jan

 

 

 

[AliceF]

According to the link Jan posted he was buried near Hooge- "beerdigt bei Hooge". Card PA 4119

Christine

[Michael Pegum]

The account of the dogfight said that he came down near Eksternest, described as a farm halfway between Bellewaarde Lake and Polygon Wood, and one kilometre north of the Menen-Ieper road. This would be near to Westhoek.

 

As to where he was buried, I go back to the report dropped at St.Omer (Post 65, above): that he had been buried in a churchyard.

 

The date of his death was 9th August, 1915.

 

Michael

Edited 24 August , 2017 by Michael Pegum

[AliceF]

I looked once more at all the Red Cross references given on the link above. None of the information given indicates burial in a cemetery.

Add here a screen print of the reference PA 4459 see below. It says in the column for grave location "near Bellewarde see sketch". No idea what the no 16501 means. But why should one refer to a "Skizze" if the location was a cemetery.

For some of the soldiers on the list the location is given with a cemetery name.

 

Christine

[AOK4]

The Skizze reference led me to believe as well that he was given a field grave in the area. However during 1915 and 1916 a lot of these graves were concentrated to German military cemeteries. But the grave may have been destroyed and lost by then. Another possibility is that the information from the concentration cemetery was lost or that identification was impossible for the IWGC after the war because of incomplete or faulty inscriptions or data in the cemetery list.

 

Jan

[charlie2]

R5783 , which is four pages long, records that the sketch would be made available to the NoK after the war, so was presumably also made available to the CWGC. I agree with Jan that he was most likely buried in a field grave.

 

Charlie

[AOK4]

8 minutes ago, charlie2 said:

R5783 , which is four pages long, records that the sketch would be made available to the NoK after the war, so was presumably also made available to the CWGC. I agree with Jan that he was most likely buried in a field grave.

 

Charlie

 

But he should have exhumed and reburied on a German concentration cemetery later. A similar thing happened to Adamson and Braddyll (shot down 5 September 1915 near Zandvoorde). They were buried on the spot (of which some postcards exist), but after the war they were exhumed and transferred to Harlebeke  from Koelberg German Cemetery. Which is logical, the Germans brought most field graves to concentrantion cemeteries late 1915 and up to mid 1917 (and some field graves from Zandvoorde area were taken to Koelberg).

In my opnion, Pike might have been brought to either Keerselaerhoek (the former German cemetery close to Tyne Cot Cemetery) or 'In de Ster' (between Beselare and Broodseinde). The British graves from Keerselaerhoek were after the war transferred to Perth Cemetery (China Wall), the ones from 'In de Ster' to Oosttaverne Wood Cemetery. It might be interesting to check the burial returns to see whether there is something about an exhumed airman from both German cemeteries.

 

Jan

[Michael Pegum]

Thank you very much for all that information; I had not seen the photo of the grave marker before.

 

I see, on the Luchtvaartgeschiedenis.be website, that it gives the site ("Locatie") as Oude Kortrijkstraat
Zonnebeke. According to Google Earth, that is just south of Polygon Wood. Is that the site of the crash, or the burial, do you think. Gunners in Polygon Wood did claim the kill.

 

Michael

Edited 28 August , 2017 by Michael Pegum