7 unknown German soldiers at Merville Communal Cemetery Extension

[knittinganddeath]

There is a common grave for 7 unknown German soldiers from WWI at Merville Communal Cemetery Extension.

Is there any way to find out 1) when they were buried there; 2) how they were identified as German and from WWI; and 3) where they were found?

 

The graves registration report form (undated, but seems to be from 1920/21 based on other dated forms for the same cemetery) does not include their grave. It is a single headstone with the words "Sieben Deutsche Soldaten" (Seven German Soldiers).

Later, their presence in the cemetery was noted, along with the grave of another unknown German from WWII. These annotations were not made at the same time, but both seem to be post-1945.

So the 7 unknown Germans could have been reburied there at any time between 1922 to 1945, but possibly even later.

(The Unknown German Soldier after Karl Lilienthal on Row B seem to have been identified later as Gottfried Sandrock. This thread has a photo of their graves as well as that of the 7 unknowns.)

Thanks for any help!

 

[LDT006]

Difficult to answer with certainty.

The note for grave B1 reads Seven German soldiers 5-9-41? (buried by Germans during 39/45)

The note for grave 6 is clearly readable. Most important is that the grave renumbering for 1-5 was done after 1945 and as you say grave 6 can even be later because it's different handwriting and the 6 was not altered.

Luc.

[egbert]

You can find the full row of German headstones in my below linked signature thread. Good hunting the thread is - how shall I say - long

[Fattyowls]

25 minutes ago, egbert said:

the thread is - how shall I say - long

But well worth the read. I'm following this because Merville is high on my list of places to visit when I can make it back. I'll be visiting Gottfried but the more I know about the others the better.

Pete.

[LDT006]

Just had a closer look and believe that someone made a wrong entry at grave B.1 for "Seven Unknown Germans...(buried by Germans during 39/45)" and changed the numbers for graves 1 to 5. That was then corrected by somebody else when they realized that grave B.1 was for a single German soldier : the "Seven" was crossed out and a new entry added for grave 6. This last entry was not made between WWI and WWII because the grave number would then have been 5 and it has not been changed but added.

This was all done by British when they returned to the area after WWII and I am quite sure that these 7 soldiers were buried there by the Germans during WWII. The only thing that I can think of is that the Germans moved these remains from somewhere else for a (still) unknown reason.

Egbert, sorry but I don't have the time now to read your long topic, maybe later.

Luc.

 

[knittinganddeath]

Thank you @egbert that was a wonderful thread. Halfway through I started thinking that there should be a book or a TV show, and by the end of the thread there were both of them.

@LDT006 Thank you for all your observations, you touched on points that also bothered me, so to speak. But if we assume that the Germans also buried the 7 unknowns during WWII, how did the writer of the second annotation conclude that they are from WWI?

Probably a red herring, but the 5-9-?? caught my eye because there was a group of 7 Germans from WWI who were buried together by the British in the Merville area on 4-9-18. Their names and general location of their graves were noted at the time, but today they have no known graves.

 

[AOK4]

55 minutes ago, knittinganddeath said:

Thank you @egbert that was a wonderful thread. Halfway through I started thinking that there should be a book or a TV show, and by the end of the thread there were both of them.

@LDT006 Thank you for all your observations, you touched on points that also bothered me, so to speak. But if we assume that the Germans also buried the 7 unknowns during WWII, how did the writer of the second annotation conclude that they are from WWI?

Probably a red herring, but the 5-9-?? caught my eye because there was a group of 7 Germans from WWI who were buried together by the British in the Merville area on 4-9-18. Their names and general location of their graves were noted at the time, but today they have no known graves.

 

Hello,

The Germans during WWII reburied some WWI German soldiers as well, mostly from known or discovered field graves or from difficult to reach cemeteries (some German cemeteries in the Argonne forest were concentrated to Consenvoye during WWII). The Germans would have clearly marked the graves as soldiers from 1914-1918.

I should read Egbert's thread again to see how his father identified the grave of Egbert's grandfather when his father was in the area in 1940.

Jan

[knittinganddeath]

Thank you Jan @AOK4. At least I can be pretty sure now that my hypothesis about the 7 soldiers can't be proven.

Egbert's grandfather was identified due to very serendipitous circumstances. His aide had sketched a detailed map of the original grave's location, and Egbert's father was able to use it to return to the farm. The woman who lived there remembered a soldier being removed to Merville cemetery. IIRC because the German soldiers there are buried in chronological order and the most recent grave was an unidentified interwar burial, the inference could be made that it was Gottfried Sandrock.

[egbert]

@knittinganddeathyou are right with your observation. My efforts to have the former "unknown German soldier" headstone converted to a personalized does not mean that this grave is a 100% that of my GF. But my fathers story was very convincing, paired with his own research, May 1940 at the farm, talking with the lady owner as witness what happened to my fathers grave on the farm grounds. Amazing that he had time 1940 during the invasion of France to stray away from official "business" and taking the time to investigate some hours his fathers fate. He only could do that because he was a Lieutenant in the Luftwaffe, serving as reconnaissance officer of his Flak unit 4./FlakRgt 43. That position gave him a lot of independency and freedom of movement ahead of his unit.

As you might have read in my trunk thread, it is so eerie that my father's unit took the exact same locations/tracks in WW2 that my GF did in WW1. Must have been extreme emotional for my father.

[egbert]

2 hours ago, AOK4 said:

I should read Egbert's thread again to see how his father identified the grave of Egbert's grandfather when his father was in the area in 1940.

Jan

Go for it Jan

[LDT006]

All the files for Merville were already on my PC because there is something else, a removal of 2 airmen to an unknown destination... Maybe the experts here have a clue?

New topic here: https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/294611-2-disappeared-airmen-at-merville-communal-cemetery-extension