Illegal exhumations from Belgium and France in the 1930's

[MrEd]

1 hour ago, battle of loos said:

good morning,

here is one picture to the Loos British Cemetery now :

michel

Michel would you be so good as to one day take a photo of the memorial inscription for Private Walter Bashford, East Surrey Regt for me please, he is on panels 65-67. He is my great uncle and I haven’t yet been able to get to Loos to put a poppy on the stone (like I managed to do for my other g-uncle at the menin gate)

thank you

ed

[Gunner 87]

On 27/06/2022 at 13:03, Erasmus said:

Thanks, helpjpl for the reference to my Blog.

I have looked in some detail at the controversy over the burial of the dead of the Great War. If you are interested it is worth exploring the articles in my blog archives here :

https://inconvenientdead.wordpress.com/2018/12/

A key point to remember is that, prior to WWI, regiments mostly took responsibility of the burial of its men, who were professional soldiers. The War Office treated death as an "occupational hazard". The treatment of the bodies and graves of soldiers was not a high-profile topic.

But with the world war came mass mobilization and conscription of men. The state was taking control of their lives (and deaths) of millions of men in an unprecedented way. Nonetheless, if a soldier died in uniform in Great Britain or Ireland, the WO transported his corpse free of charge to the nearest railway station to the family, who could then manage the burial according to their wishes (and their budget). Sometimes the regiment helped with the departure, and any local units (or even the scouts) might provide an escort or a firing party. Many cemeteries and churchyards offered discounted burial plots for servicemen. This practice continued throughout 1914-18. During the war there was no plan to mark those civilian graves which explains why many Great War graves in UK have fancy private headstones provided by the family.

Clearly, this was not feasible overseas whilst there was a war on, and repatriation of corpses was stopped by 1915. But after the war it was perhaps not unreasonable to think that some sort of repatriation might be allowed.

Post-war the treatment of overseas graves became a hot topic - it wasn't a party political issue of left and right, it was more of a battle between the War Offie and mothers and wives who wanted to reclaim their men.  Fabian Ware came from a Plymouth Brethren background, and he imposed his ideas and his own spartan taste on memorialisation. Coming out of the Victorian era of sentimentality, fancy funerals and highly decorated graves, many families didn't want this plain, uniform memorial for their sons and husbands, curated by someone remote. Who gave them this authority anyway? Many thought this was cruel and heartless. Nor did they want their graves to be maintained by strangers.   As a concession, token personalisation was allowed on the war graves, with a line or two of epitaph. Families were encouraged to select from standard phrases, though they could say anything (as long as it wasn't critical or unpatriotic). The Dominion authorities supported Whitehall in this - in fact, New Zealand didn't even allow an epitaph on their headstones.

The CWGC holds a lot of correspondence from the time on topic. 

France, at first had a similar approach. Its government forbad exhumations from the war cemeteries near the front. But then women started appealing to the government, using the legendary example of Antigone at Troy to shame authorities into allowing access to their graves. The French government conceded, and where bodies could be identified, for a few months it allowed exhumations and reburial of their soldiers back in their commune's cemetery.  The USA likewise allowed repatriation of bodies on request. 

But all appeals to the authorities in the UK and the Dominions fell on deaf ears. The War Office was committed to the grand ouevre of architect-designed war cemeteries, marking the dead in uniform ranks near to where they fell.  Even though this required exhuming and relocating thousands of corpses - just as the families wanted to do. Even if it meant replacing perfectly good headstones with new standard ones.  And while this went on, there were families who tried to intercept bodies that had been dug up and sent en-route to the final war cemetery. 

However, apart from the three instances I have documented in my blog, I have been unable to find examples of body-snatching from British/Dominion military graves. And if it did happen, then by now we would have able to identify graves in England that had been repatriated. There is normally good documentation around a burial and anything out of the usual should surely have come to light by now.

Thank you Erasmus, I appreciate you taking the time to post that interesting information. There has been some highly informative contributions on a subject I, and I'm sure other members, knew very little about. Gunner 87

 

[battle of loos]

On 6/27/2022 at 5:24 PM, MrEd said:

Michel would you be so good as to one day take a photo of the memorial inscription for Private Walter Bashford, East Surrey Regt for me please, he is on panels 65-67. He is my great uncle and I haven’t yet been able to get to Loos to put a poppy on the stone (like I managed to do for my other g-uncle at the menin gate)

thank you

ed

Good evening
I see to do that on Saturday.

regards

michel

[MrEd]

10 minutes ago, battle of loos said:

Good evening
I see to do that on Saturday.

regards

michel

You are a gentleman, I am very appreciative 

Ed 

[bierast]

On the German side, it was established policy during the war that any family had the right to bring their dead home at their own expense. It was a very expensive option and officially discouraged using much the same arguments seen on the British side regarding the propriety of the dead of all ranks remaining together with their comrades. Obviously this was only feasible for the wealthy, and the cases I know of all involve fallen officers (nevertheless, even many high-ranking German officers are still buried in France and Belgium).

I have not heard anything about the situation after the war, but if there had been no change in policy there would presumably be no need for illegal exhumations (unless a desperate family was attempting to repatriate their dead 'on the cheap' somehow).

[AOK4]

10 minutes ago, bierast said:

On the German side, it was established policy during the war that any family had the right to bring their dead home at their own expense. It was a very expensive option and officially discouraged using much the same arguments seen on the British side regarding the propriety of the dead of all ranks remaining together with their comrades. Obviously this was only feasible for the wealthy, and the cases I know of all involve fallen officers (nevertheless, even many high-ranking German officers are still buried in France and Belgium).

I have not heard anything about the situation after the war, but if there had been no change in policy there would presumably be no need for illegal exhumations (unless a desperate family was attempting to repatriate their dead 'on the cheap' somehow).

Hello,

It is allowed until today to repatriate a fallen relative (that's why identified bodies remain buried in single graves). It was only not possible to repatriate in Belgium for instance between ca 1918 and 1926 (when there was no official agreement in place between the countries). Not only officers were repatriated, also plenty of other ranks, both during the war and after.

Jan

[bierast]

1 hour ago, AOK4 said:

Hello,

It is allowed until today to repatriate a fallen relative (that's why identified bodies remain buried in single graves). It was only not possible to repatriate in Belgium for instance between ca 1918 and 1926 (when there was no official agreement in place between the countries). Not only officers were repatriated, also plenty of other ranks, both during the war and after.

Jan

Thankyou Jan, I defer to your formidable expertise on this subject! I presume cost remained the major limiting factor after the war?

[Gunner 87]

1 hour ago, AOK4 said:

Hello,

It is allowed until today to repatriate a fallen relative (that's why identified bodies remain buried in single graves). It was only not possible to repatriate in Belgium for instance between ca 1918 and 1926 (when there was no official agreement in place between the countries). Not only officers were repatriated, also plenty of other ranks, both during the war and after.

Jan

Interesting Jan, thanks. So it would also have been illegal to exhume a German soldier and remove him from Belgium to Germany between 1918 and 1926 but perhaps not from France. 

[Matlock1418]

On 27/06/2022 at 13:03, Erasmus said:

I have looked in some detail at the controversy over the burial of the dead of the Great War. If you are interested it is worth exploring the articles in my blog archives here :

https://inconvenientdead.wordpress.com/2018/12/

Welcome to GWF

An interesting article [and from there I then note others from you on the subject of the treatment and commemoration of the dead]

Thanks for joining GWF.

M

Edited 1 July , 2022 by Matlock1418

[Niko]

Here's the grave of Private Hopkins at Schoonselhof Cemetery, Antwerp.

He was killed in November 1917 and buried is a cemetery at Passendale.

After the war, his grieving parents decided he had to be buried in Canada, so they came over, dug his remains up, identified him and transported him to Antwerp to be transferred by ship.

It was only discovered on the quayside, so his remains were taken to the nearest Military Cemetery: Schoonselhof.