topic Re: Does Anyone Know? in Community Spirit

Does Anyone Know?

the_great_she_elephant — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 02:41:30 GMT

I have just finished reading an article in today's Sunday Times about a visit to the WWI Battlefields in France, and a thoughts struck me: there are beautiful, evocative cemetries- English and Colonial - in these places, but what happend to the bodies of all those young German soldiers who endured the same horrors and died just as bravely and just as wastefully as "our" boys did?

I doubt whether the German Government, crippled by savage punitive payments to the allies after the war, could have afforded to bring them all home, and one could hardly expect the French to raise memorials to their invaders, but do they all just lie where they fell in unmarked graves, where their descendants can never visit to remember them and honour the sacrifices they made? From a distance of 100 years that seems to me incredibly sad.

Re: Does Anyone Know?

cherry*135 — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 02:50:05 GMT

Here is one recent story about recovery of some fallen German soldiers. WWII though. Association of the recovery of the fallen.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2776989/Recovering-fallen-German-soldiers-killed-bloody-Second-World-War-Brandenburg-battle-discovered-wearing-boots-helmets.html

WWI
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2099187/Bodies-21-German-soldiers-buried-alive-WW1-trench-perfectly-preserved-94-years-later.html

Re: Does Anyone Know?

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 03:11:38 GMT

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_War_Graves_Commission

Re: Does Anyone Know?

icyfroth — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 04:52:19 GMT

Re: Does Anyone Know?

the_great_she_elephant — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 05:19:36 GMT

Thanks Julia/Icy, it's good to know they haven't just been forgotten.

I was interested to see in that link that there is a cemetery for both WWs at Cannock Chase in England (presumably for deceased bomber crews and POWs). As a child I lived for some time in a little village on the edge of Cannock Chase - we went for picnics there frequently - yet I never knew about it. Mind you, that was in the immeditate post war years so I suppose the locals weren't particularly interested in visiting it.

Re: Does Anyone Know?

aps1080 — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 05:25:04 GMT

Gse

I spent a fair bit of time at Cannock Chase.
I lived near Lichfield as a kid..
Small world.

Re: Does Anyone Know?

the_great_she_elephant — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 05:44:23 GMT

I'm getting all nostalgic now. I have a beautiful semi-professional photo that was taken of me and my twin sister there - on the stepping stones near Seven Springs - we would have been about seven at the tme. Soon after that we moved to East Anglia and I've never been back.

We lived at Little Haywood.

Re: Does Anyone Know?

aps1080 — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 05:50:37 GMT

Have been there. Spent my youth helping catch swans in Staffordshire as my father was an ornithologist. Anywhere there was water. Draycott Power station was another. Also spent many weekends on the Wash.

Re: Does Anyone Know?

the_great_she_elephant — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 06:28:40 GMT

OMG aps I'm beginning to suspect you've been stalking me all my life

We lived a bit further South - about 3 miles from Diss but on the Suffolk side of the Waveney.

Re: Does Anyone Know?

aps1080 — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 06:38:56 GMT

Shenstone was the village Of our first house.

Went to school in Birmingham.