The Missing on the Western Front


The Missing on the Western Front 

After the Great War, the British Empire faced a monumental task of cleansing the battlefields of bodies. Over 600,000 empire troops had died across thousands of square miles spanning Passchendaele in Belgium and the Somme in France.

The Imperial War Graves Commission had resolved in November 1918 to identify all isolated graves, exhume remains, and then rebury them into larger cemeteries, where they would receive reverent care. 

The commission divided the battlefield up and allocated the Villers-Bretonneux sector to the Australian Corps for cleansing. The corps then formed a battalion of 1,100 volunteer soldiers. 

Private Henry Whiting volunteered for the battalion, partly because he wanted to ensure his brother received a decent burial.

Whiting’s squad covered ground recently fought over. ‘I can assure you that it is a very unpleasant undertaking,’ he recorded. ‘They are far from being decayed properly so you can guess the constitution one needs.’ 

After exhuming remains, Whiting searched pockets, necks, wrists, and braces for identity discs, grasping that it would be ‘cruel for their people’s minds’ at home if the soldier’s identity remained unknown.’ 

Few remains retained identity discs; the parties had to rely on other methods to identify them — a name on a compass, a photograph case, a key tab, a spoon, or a pipe bowl. 

Searching bodies for identity discs; bodies that are mangled, half-squashed, caked in clay, tangled in equipment, no longer much of anything but muddy, bloody heaps, condemned many searchers to mental wounds, with some going to ‘pieces with the grog’. 

‘We will be a hard-hearted crowd when we get back,’ lamented Whiting, ‘after the sights we see.’

In September 1921, the British secretary of state for war officially ended the search for the missing in Europe, despite exhumation parties still discovering 600 bodies per week.
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CLIFFORD HOYT: THE MAN WHO HAS SEEN HELL

Image
CLIFFORD HOYT: THE MAN WHO HAS SEEN HELL I immediately make a premise. Many Paranormal groups report news similar to the one I am about to publish, about a certain Harry Hoyt, aged 31, who died in 1999 a few days after having an accident from which he woke up saying he saw Hell (and they put a scene from the movie “Hellraiser 2” as a photo).  Well, what I found in my research is very different, although the common thread is the same. So it's up to you to decide which version is the right one (assuming one of the two is true). Let's go to the facts. The protagonist is Clifford Hoyt (not Harry: Harry Hyot is an American filmmaker to me), 31 who suffered serious injuries in a car accident due to icy asphalt in 1999, on his way home after a long day at work in Maryland. . He remained in a coma for a few hours and when he regained consciousness, he revealed to the nurse that he was looking after him that he had been sucked into a vortex that led him straight to Hell. He told of the ...
Read more

Kids as Crew: Ship’s Boys, Powder Monkeys, Cabin Boys, and Midshipmen in the Age of Sail

Image
Kids as Crew: Ship’s Boys, Powder Monkeys, Cabin Boys, and Midshipmen in the Age of Sail Ship’s Boys … and Girls! The Age of Sail was said to be the domain of “wooden ships and iron men.” This may be true, but sailing ships also had “boys” on their official crew lists. Truth be told, some ships also carried women, and some of the people who signed on as “ship’s boys” were actually girls. But what were these kids doing on board sailing ships? Today, you have to be 14 years old before you can get a job in most states in the US, but in the Age of Sail both merchant ships and navy vessels signed on boys as young as seven years old as regular members of the crew. Positions open to kids were usually that of cabin boy (also called ship’s boy), midshipman, and powder monkey. Ship’s boys and powder monkeys usually came from poor families, or were runaways or orphans. Getting a position onboard a ship at least meant they had a place to sleep and meals to eat, plus opportunities to...
Read more

The story behind the ‘Simpson and his Donkey’ statue

Image
The story behind the ‘Simpson and his Donkey’ statue This evocative statue is located in the gardens of Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance.  The tale of Simpson and his donkey rescuing wounded soldiers from the murderous heights of Gallipoli has taken on mythical proportions in Australia.  It’s become a sacred pillar of the Anzac legend.  And unsurprisingly its sculpture, designed by Wallace Anderson in 1933, is laden with biblical meaning.  A donkey, after all, carried Mary across the Holy Land. Simpson was a real life exemplar of the Good Samaritan parable. And like Jesus Christ, Simpson sacrificed himself so others could live.  Now, the real story behind Simpson and the statue turns out to be much more interesting than the one-dimensional legend.  Firstly, the knock-about Simpson’s real surname was Kirkpatrick; secondly, he was English, not Australian. And finally, rather than working with the medical corps, Kirkpatrick had adopted his own ‘roving commiss...
Read more

MGM... A Kid's Toy Chest One Man's Trash

Image
MGM... A Kid's Toy Chest One Man's Trash— I've been told I have an "active imagination." Like that's a bad thing. I tend to tune out the "real world" with all of its stress and pressures, in order to spend every waking moment on some back lot, somewhere.  I always defend my so-called fantasy life... what's "fake" to you is "real" to me! Because the stuff you see on TV does exist; it's not fake! I see it, I smell it, and if I can climb all over it, I DO!  And all the old things stored inside these back lots are like some cool kid's garage. Some people might call it junk, but you know what they say, "one man's trash is another man's treasure."  I'd say this is especially true for a kid, and this kid has access to every toy... past, present, or future. No size is too big. And many items are custom built just for one scene, making them special rarities. Those rarities will have their one big moment in...
Read more

During the 1980s, Carmelo “Carlo” Profeta was part of Roy DeMeo's famous crew, known as "The Murder Machine".

Image
During the 1980s, Carmelo “Carlo” Profeta was part of Roy DeMeo's famous crew, known as "The Murder Machine".  This crew of the Gambino family sold drugs in large quantities, stole luxury cars to resell them abroad, and its members killed 75 known people (the true number of people killed by this crew is actually estimated at nearly 200 people) around New York.  All these crimes lead to a trial in 1989. Profeta was sentenced to eight years in prison. After his release from prison, Profeta joined the Lucchese family and he and Private John "Johnny V" Vanasco (image) became good friends. They have since gone through thick and thin together. At the beginning of 2002, Profeta and Vanasco both extorted the manager of a fuel oil company, threatening him with bodily harm and even more if he did not approve their request. In September 2002, they were both convicted of extortion by a federal jury in Manhattan. In December 2003, a Brooklyn court again found the two men gui...
Read more

Willi Georg - Warsaw ghetto street, Poland 1939 – 1943

Image
Willi Georg - Warsaw ghetto street, Poland 1939 – 1943  The radio operator Willy Georg from Münster, who was born in 1911 and thus enlisted as an “old soldier”, was an accomplished photographer, and in the army he also supplemented his income by taking pictures of his fellow soldiers with his Leica camera.  In the summer of 1941, when their unit was stationed in Warsaw, he was issued a pass by one of his officers and instructed to enter the enclosed ghetto and take photos of what he saw there. Georg shot four rolls of films and began to shoot a fifth one when the German military police stopped him.  They confiscated the film in his camera, but fortunately they did not check his pockets before escorting him out of the ghetto. Georg developed the four rolls in Warsaw and preserved the photos in the next fifty years together with his other war pictures.  In the late 1980s he met Rafael Scharf from London, a researcher of Polish-Jewish studies, to whom he gave these phot...
Read more

Hands of madness

Image
Italino Iacomelli Tomb, 1925 This is the grave of Italino Iacomelli, a child that died on the 16th of August in 1925 when he was five years old. He became the victim of a mad killer while he was playing in the garden. His mother had already died. The father, Donatello Iacomelli (1889/1976) has been buried in this grave where the mother rests, too. Hands of madness The tragic story of a child that found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Coming to the highest part of the  Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno  (Genova, Italy), you might come across a particular statue, different from all the others. It represents a child of about 5 years, running carefree behind his circle, while two hands of madness are about to grab him from behind and seal his fate. Italino It was the  year 1925 , and a child, baptized with a nationalist name  Italo , as it was used at that time, was  spending his days playing in the streets of Genova . His mother died durin...
Read more

This photograph shows a young Mother, exhausted from spending hours making matchboxes

Image
This photograph shows a young Mother, exhausted from spending hours making matchboxes, a pile of which can be seen on the table. At her feet is a young, sleeping child covered by a blanket. For such homeworkers engaged in the sweated industries there was no division between work and home life. Match-box making was amongst the lowest paid work. The industry primarily employed women and children who could expect to work an average of 16 hours per day. For every 144 boxes made they received 2 pennies. This photograph appears in an album with a number of other prints depicting sweated labourers and London's poor. Such albums were often compiled by charities to raise funds and inform the public about the plight of those living and working in London's poorest areas, such as the East End. London’s Working Class: 1870-1901 The Social Reformer Charles Booth was a wealthy man who campaigned for better conditions for the poorest workers in London. He commissioned photographers to take...
Read more

The Inuit people can't be imagined without their signature parkas, fashioned from fur and hide of the local wildlife

Image
The Inuit people can't be imagined without their signature parkas, fashioned from fur and hide of the local wildlife. One of the many reasons why early European voyages into the Arctic circle failed is because they were underprepared for the extreme weather conditions of the north.  They wore wool clothing, which kept them hot on the inside, but made them sweat a lot, which made their clothing freeze in the extreme temperatures. The Inuit never faced this problem, as they have been making their parkas from caribou deer or seal hide from as early as 22,000 BC (Siberia).  The production of these parkas took weeks, and the tradition of making them was passed down from mother to daughter, taking years to master. Depending on the geographical location of the tribes, the design of the parkas varied according to the types of animals available. Beadwork, fringes and pendants frequently decorated the clothing.  Roald Amundsen was the first explorer who outfitted his crew with Inui...
Read more

Karel Richter - World War II Spy Violently Fought his Hangman Pierrepoint on the Gallows

Image
Karel Richter - World War II Spy Violently Fought his Hangman Pierrepoint on the Gallows On the 10th of December 1941, German spy, Karel Richard Richter was hanged at Wandsworth Prison, London by Albert Pierrepoint. This was the man who Pierrepoint describes in his biography of giving him serious trouble.  Almost all accounts of hangings describe the prisoner as going to the gallows peacefully if not bravely. This was not the case with Herr Richter. With great difficulty Albert got the wrist straps on but Richter who was a powerfully built man and fought the warders every inch of the way. He managed to get his hands free and had split the strap from one hole to the next, which must have taken great force. Finally the warders got Richter onto the trap door but just as Albert was pushing the lever, Richter jumped loosening the noose which slipped from under his chin to a point under his upper lip.  Richter’s neck must have snapped with the noose held tight around his face as opp...
Read more