War Graves in France from WW1

[tali1]

Regarding the War Graves in France from WW1 -how quickly would a dead soldier be buried after death?- and ,i assume the cemetary plots where they chosen in advance and how far are the cemetaries from the battlefields?
Was each soldier allocated his own grave or were they mass burials?

[beejay1124]

the cemeteries(some quite small-some massive ) are dotted all around the region where the battles took place-the green war graves signposts direct you off main roads to the cemeteries-each cemetery is immaculaty kept and the whole area is geared to battlefield tours

in some cases headstones bear the names of two soldiers
this link may help you
http://battlefields1418.50megs.com/links.htm

[dundurn]

Soldiers killed in action whose bodies were recovered and identified were buried behind the lines, usually not too far from where they had fallen. Wounded soldiers were taken to dressing stations for casualty clearing. Some would be repatriated, some to base hospitals, others patched up and sent back to the line (possibly after a period of recuperation). Many died in the dressing stations, however, and each station accumulated its own graveyard.

Because the lines moved, sometimes a dressing station used by the Germans was used later on by the Allies and subsequently by the Germans again etc. As a result soldiers of both armies were buried near to each other. This happened in any case where wounded POWs died in the hands of the other side.

Some of the graveyards did not survive the war, being detroyed in shelling. After the armistice some of the sites were designated as permanent. Many of the smaller and outlying burial sites were exhumed and the bodies moved to one of the larger sites. In some cases it was simple economics where there was a need to return land to practical use and whole graveyards were moved and combined with others. In others there was a need to move bodies for hygenic reasons or because the site would be unsuitable for some other reason..

Many men were never found and their memorial is one of the large structures erected close to the major battlefields, like the Menin Gate. Unidentified bodies were generally allotted their own grave but mass burial was used In many cases for speed. In general you will find war graves relatively close to the site of the battle.

As a point of interest Google Fromelles. There has been a recent discovery of a British/ Australian mass grave there but a new cemetery is planned because of flooding risk and the need to be able to accommodate visitors.

[paddywak]

The Menin Gate, Ypre, is built across the road which was the main route to the Ypres salient, the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of WW1 and has engraved on it the names of about 60,000 men who have no known graves. Since 1928-29 men of the local Fire Service have sounded the Last Post every evening, except for the war years when the practice was continued at Brookwood Military Cemetary, Surrey, the tradition means so much nto the locals that on the very day Ypres was liberated a bugler sounded the Last Post even though there was still heavy fighting in the area. If you ever get the chance it's well worth the visit as it gives you the true scale of the war. The last Post is a very emotive piece at any time but to hear it there in the presence of such reminder of the sacrifice of so many is really special

[spudqueen]

Last night I watched a programme I had recorded. It was about famous people tracing what their ancestors did in the First World War, it was part of the BBC 1914-1918 season. Anyway, the episode I saw last night had Dan (?) Snow researching his Great Grandfather, General Snow, and an ex-eastenders actress (I'm sorry - I'm not into celebrity anything so I don't know these peoples names!), whose Great Grandfather volunteered to go back to France and Belgium in 1919 as part of an Exhumation team to find bodies in the fields and bury them in the cemetaries. They would sometimes be able to find graves by crosses still being visible, or sometimes because there was lush grass growing on top of the grave (yes!), but they had a long metal rod they would drive into the ground, if it came out sticky and smelly they had found a body. They would then have to search the body for any clues as to who it was before reburying it in a military cemetary. Lovely job, but someone had to do it.