"burning the dead"

[Skipman]

While transcribing part of the 1st Division War Diary for September 27th, 1914, I noticed this entry " Enemy reported by French to be burning the dead. " I thought at first it said "burying"?

 

Had a search on Forum but don't see a mention. Did this actually take place and were they burning their own dead?

 

Any thoughts?

 

Mike

Edited 21 November , 2017 by Skipman

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

Hi Mike,

It doesn't specify they were burning their own dead.

And the fact that the writer is quoting unnamed French sources just makes me think, given the time in the war, that this is intended to be evidence of uncivilised behaviour by the Germans, like killing Belgian babies.

[Guest]

Hi Dai. Yes I suppose could be rumour/propaganda. Will see if anyone else has heard of it.

 

Mike

[kenf48]

There was a French proposal early in the war, that the bodies of the war dead (most of whom lay within their borders) should be cremated by the use of mobile war crematoria.  There were practical reasons why it was not adopted as well as other issues, but apart from hygiene it was proposed such a scheme would also have the benefit of the facility to return the ashes to next of kin.  

 

The proposal was briefly mentioned in David Crane's 'Empires of the Dead' when he was discussing how Fabian Ware came to recognise the problem of dealing with and identifying the dead.  I don't have a reference and no longer have the book.  Given the date I wonder if this was an early attempt at implementation.

 

Ken

[AOK4]

Hello,

 

Still today a lot of stories pop up saying thathe Germans burnt their dead in the cement ovens of Hainaut so that it would be unknown how many dead there were and also this was used in propaganda to show how barbaric they were (cremation was then seen as non-christian). I think there is a topic on this subject from some years ago.

 

I have done a lot of research about German cemeteries and burials and can find no evidence whatsoever that this would have been done. Certain individuals were cremated but only after repatriation to Germany at the request of the next of kin.

 

Jan

[AOK4]

1 minute ago, MrSwan said:

Is there not a possibility that they were burning the carcasses of dead farm animals? I'm reminded of those awful scenes in this country during the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak...

 

That is very much possible as well, although most examples that I found in regimental histories speak about burying dead animals.

[Ron Clifton]

The British allowed the burning of many of their Indian dead, in accordance with Hindu custom.

 

Ron

[phil andrade]

Dead were definitely burnt at Gallipoli, and on quite a scale. 

 

In France and Belgium, the accounts were anecdotal, by and large.

 

Sheldon's book on the German Army on the Somme contains a photograph of a German field crematorium.

 

My guess is that this was for cremating  horses.

 

Richard Holmes writes about hetacombs of German dead being cremated along the canal after the battle of Mons.

 

If the Germans were in the habit of burning the dead, then surely they would have done so at Fromelles .  Far from cremating them, they interred them at Pheasant Wood, despite the fact that the warm weather and the condition of the dead made this a revolting task.

 

Likewise, despite the terrific pressure of time that they were labouring under in their advance in August 1914, German burial details were busy dealing with enemy dead.  One such episode is recorded by a German officer charged with clearing the battlefield after fighting the British on 24 August : he alludes to 135 British and 169 Germans being buried in one sector.

 

After the much bigger battles against the French in the Ardennes, the Germans reported burying five or six French dead for every two of their own.

 

If cremation had been the practice, then surely this would have been carried out in those straitened circumstances.

 

My conclusion is that this cremation story  was part of lurid folklore ; if not, it was perhaps applicable to horses.

 

The fact that more than 900,000 German soldiers from the Great War are interred in military cemeteries in France and Belgium attests this : there were, of course, several hundred thousand more that were not recovered ; but it jut doesn't seem plausible to me that they were cremated by the Germans.  They might have been by Franco Belgian civilians after the war.

 

That said, I must retain an open mind ;  the stories might be true....but I would be reluctant to endorse them.

 

Phil

 

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

If cremation was in any way a standard prectice for the German army,  we would have read hundreds of such incidents in intelligence reports etc. along with other routine matters like troop and train movements.

The fact that the diary is reporting a second hand (at least) report of such an event, ie. wild rumour, strikes me as being code for "Look what the filthy Hun are reduced to now."

[AOK4]

2 hours ago, Ron Clifton said:

The British allowed the burning of many of their Indian dead, in accordance with Hindu custom.

 

Ron

 

The Germans allowed this as well for the Indian PoWs, that's why they are still "buried" all over Germany and not on the concentration cemeteries (you can't exhume and rebury some ashes).

 

Jan

[NigelS]

2 hours ago, Ron Clifton said:

The British allowed the burning of many of their Indian dead, in accordance with Hindu custom.

 

Indeed, with a special site at Patcham on the Downs near Brighton  being used for evacuated wounded Hindus & Sikhs  who had died at Indian Military hospitals that had been set up near the south coast. Moslems were buried in accordance with their customs at Brookwood, and, although now moved from there, a special cemetery created by the War Department on the Horsell/Maybury Common near Woking.

I would Imagine that Hindu & Sikh soldiers serving on the Western Front would have wanted to carry out cremations in accordance with their usual funerary  rites there. Is there any reference or accounts of these actually having taking place on the Western Front, and, if there were such, might 'the filthy Hun', have said  'look what the filthy Tommies are reduced to now', had they witnessed them?

 

Although still early days for cremation in the UK (it became legal towards the end of the 19th Century; for a brief history see History of Modern Cremation in Great Britain from 1874: The First Hundred Years ) there were, from CWGC records covering crematoriums,  some 100 or so of UK servicemen during WW1  (One of the more famous  in 1920, although not covered by the CWGC as he was no longer serving, was that of Lord 'Jacky' Fisher  who was given a state funeral in Westminster Abbey, cremated at Golders Green with his ashes interred in the grave of his wife at St Andrews Church, Kilverstone, Norfolk.) By WW2 there were, indicating both  acceptance by the Church of England and the steady increase in popularity, over 3,000)

 

NigelS

 

[AOK4]

31 minutes ago, NigelS said:

 

I would Imagine that Hindu & Sikh soldiers serving on the Western Front would have wanted to carry out cremations in accordance with their usual funerary  rites there. Is there any reference or accounts of these actually having taking place on the Western Front, and, if there were such, might 'the filthy Hun', have said  'look what the filthy Tommies are reduced to now', had they witnessed them?

 

 

Can we please stop using these names for the Germans? There is no need to keep calling them Huns or whatever continuously.

 

Did you know that cremation was already relatively accepted in certain parts of Germany?

 

To give one example: Max Immelmann, the Eagle of Lille, was repatriated and cremated. He still has an urn grave in Dresden.

 

[IPT]

4 minutes ago, AOK4 said:

Can we please stop using these names for the Germans?

 

I don't think he was.

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

1 hour ago, AOK4 said:

 

Can we please stop using these names for the Germans? There is no need to keep calling them Huns or whatever continuously.

 

 

I think you are missing the point.

I was not calling the Germans "Huns".

 

1) The Germans were referred to as "The Huns", "The Bosche" (and worse) by contemporary soldiers, and such use of language was in widespread use at the time , in the press, and even in war diaries.

We can't re-write history.

 

2) The use of quotation marks by myself clearly shows that I am using that contemporary term to show how contemporary British soldiers would have responded to a puzzling report about what was supposed to be happening behind enemy lines. In the context of the time, it is not difficult to imagine that conclusions were drawn without much evidence, and that facts were often adjusted to conform to one's own expectations, preconceptions and prejudices about what was widely believed was a brutal enemy.

[Stoppage Drill]

It was the Kaiser who coined the term wasn't it, at Bremerhaven, when seeing off the German Expeditionary Force to assist in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion ?

[kenf48]

Without commenting on the veracity of the diary entry there was a historical precedent 100 years before at Waterloo where the Allied troops were interred in mass graves and the enemy were cremated on massive funeral pyres which one 'eyewitness' observed were still burning over a week later.  

 

Ken

 

 

 

 

[phil andrade]

Come to think of it. wouldn’t cremation of large numbers of dead have been an intensely laborious and difficult exercise ?

 

Not that burial is easy...  but more practicable, especially while operations are still underway .

 

The situation at Gallipoli remains to be accounted for.

 

Phil

 

 

[greatspywar]

To get back at the topic, in what context has the writer of the War Diary written this particular phrase? Was in the midst of battle, during a lull at the fighting, during a long period on non-combat activity? What does the next sentence mention? "(...) the dead - ??": horses? Enemy soldiers? pieces of wood? Lice? I can assume he means "dead soldiers". What French unit could he have meant? I am missing some additional context to get this interesting phrase framed.

 

Can you shed som light Mike, or is it a hush-hush business? :-)

 

I would love to hear more about this!

 

All the best,

 

(Other) Jan

 

[RaySearching]

from the link in Mikes opening post

 

 

Mike may have misread the writing

appears to me as nothing to do with burning the dead looks more like gunning

alternate transcriptions welcome 

Ray

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

2 minutes ago, RaySearching said:

from the link in Mikes opening post

 

 

Mike may have misread the writing

appears to me as nothing to do with burning the dead looks more like gunning

alternate transcriptions welcome 

Ray

 

No, I think it's a lower case 'b' not a 'G'.

It looks the same as the b' in the line below in 'blind' and 'black'.

[greatspywar]

14 minutes ago, Dai Bach y Sowldiwr said:

 

No, I think it's a lower case 'b' not a 'G'.

It looks the same as the b' in the line below in 'blind' and 'black'.

True! I wonder why the French even care what the Germans do with their dead. I'll try to do some look-ups in French sources tomorrow. Perhaps we can find out some more... .

 

 

[Guest]

Nothing hush hush. Pretty sure it's "burning" This towards the end of the Battle of the Aisne 1914. Agree it's second hand. Wonder if there's any mention in French War diaries?

 

Mike

[greatspywar]

Do you have any idea which French divisions were around at that time? I know the French army was very busy at that particular moment... I don't feel much going through all the French diaries for all the units... That would be bit over the top, would it not? 

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, greatspywar said:

Do you have any idea which French divisions were around at that time? I know the French army was very busy at that particular moment... I don't feel much going through all the French diaries for all the units... That would be bit over the top, would it not?

 

No, I have absolutely no idea. Feel free to trawl the French diaries but don't do it on my account. I'm just vaguely curious and it's not vital to my research. If I learn which French units were nearby I shall certainly post here and anybody is free to delve as deeply (or not) as they wish.

 

Cheers Mike

[Derek Black]

The wounded, in no mans land, were burned with petrol bombs at Aubers.