Here's a couple videos that are pretty damned fascinating if you ask me. Exhuming the graves of these German soldiers so they can be brought home to their home shows just how horrific battlefield wounds can be.
A large number of German soldiers killed in 1945 on the Eastern Front are exhumed from a village cemetery where they had been lying in unmarked and forgotten graves. Of note were two bodies with amputations, some bodies with splints and tourniquets, bodies with severe war wounds and numerous ID tags as well as a few rings. The bodies were exhumed in order to be reburied in a large centralised military cemetery.
VIDEO HERE (33.30 minutes)
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Exhumation of 25 German soldiers from a forgotten field cemetery on the eastern front. Most of the soldiers still had their identification tags. Several bodies displayed signs of medical treatment, such as the presence of splints or of tourniquets on fractured limbs. 14 of the 25 bodies had been buried in coffins. One amputated leg was also found with the bodies. Also found were one half body, one severely mangled body, a wedding ring, a campaign ring, a death head ring, shrapnel fragments, condoms, coins and buttons. The exact location of the cemetery was found thanks to an elderly period witness.
The point of the excavation was to recover these bodies buried in unmarked graves, to identify them, to rebury them in an official German war cemetery, and to inform the relatives of the soldiers of the location of the bodies.
VIDEO HERE (34:46 minutes)
Seems like they could have just put a memorial on the site and been done with it.
ReplyDeleteThere is no custom or religious traditions in the West that requires bodies to be identified and returned. I'm pretty certain the surviving relatives from that war already know what happened and made peace with it.
--Generic
Ask an old Russian soldier if he cares.
ReplyDeleteAsk any communist survivor if they care about russian soldiers, you know, the ones that raped and killed civilians... Hybo
ReplyDeleteLots of Russian soldiers brutalized German women after Germany's fall. Not often reported is the story that some Allied units were given the okay to do likewise. Almost kind of a Chicken or Egg thing, isn't it? Trying to figure out who is to blame is a fool's errand sometimes.
DeleteSounds like the right thing to do. The USMC is well known for not leaving men or their remains behind. The US is still bringing home the bodies of the fallen from wars around the world. If at all possible a soldier should rest in the soil of his homeland.
ReplyDeleteI don't know. I didn't live during the time of WWII. But I have mostly forgiven the Germans, Italians, and sort of the Japanese, for what they did during the war. And I think of all of the Americans who are buried in Holland, Belgium, Germany, France,and untold numbers of other nations, and I think that their families at the time would have wished to have had their loved ones home to bury them close to their hearts. But the description of the condition of the bodies also shows the realities of the horror of war, and how at some point, such as now, it might be best to allow those who have been resting for so long, to remain at rest,just as our heroes also remain finally at peace.
ReplyDeletepigpen51
No side came out of that war. No side's honor was unsullied.
ReplyDeleteFor several years volunteers have exhumed and reburied several thousand Russian soldiers buried after large battles but not in army cemeteries. The volunteers work on weekends in former battle areas as well as in forests.
ReplyDeleteI very much respect the spirit that goes with a "Little Bit of England Lies Wherever a Trooper Is Buried" but the opportunity of Coming Home honors each and every one while bringing solace if not finality to their kin.
ReplyDeleteI'm the namesake of a Tanker killed in Germany the day after FDR died. In 1949 he was returned home. Often wondered how the telegram announcing his death meshed with the announcement of VE Day.
We're coming up on the 70th anniversary of Korea's Chosin Reservoir campaign. A serviceman buried along that campaign route was recently repatriated.
DOD's "Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command - JPAC" has ongoing missions to identify and return service members from all wars.
I recommend 2 books to anyone interested in man's inhumanity to man which was no where more evident than the Eastern Front.
ReplyDeleteStalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder
Do NOT read them during this coming winter. They should be read in high summer, with a bottle of strong drink close at hand.
How we, the living, treat the remains of the dead reflects only on us, not them, because the dead have moved on. Surely those German soldiers, now 75 years dead, long ago have been judged by their Almighty, or have walked the nine days of the Helroad and made their way across the river of blades to the Thingstead, there to account for lives before their forefathers and the Elder Kin.
ReplyDeleteAt this long remove, those men are beyond our judgment, and for my part, I applaud the desire to see their remains repatriated with dignity and respect. As much, or maybe even more for our own honor and healing than for those long-dead men. The great majority of the men who fought for Germany in 1945 were not wicked men, and it does not behoove us to behave as if they were.
A healthy culture remembers, it does not forget, but it also moves on. A sick culture repeats to itself over and over the litany of wrongs, both actual and perceived, done unto them over the millennia, and plots and schemes and takes glee in humiliating, torturing, and dishonoring those who never personally wronged them out of supposed revenge. I reject sick cultures that revel in martyrdom and self-pity, and specifically, I oppose those who want Germany eternally punished.
As a dependent living in Germany for 7 years, then another 3 as a GI, I've met plenty of old German soldiers. I have nothing but respect for them. They fought for Germany, not Hitler.
DeleteIt's probably a good idea to relocate them. Like the story said, only some senior citizens remembered who and where these soldiers were buried. No markers, no maintenance, no records, eventually lost down the memory hole. By relocating them, the graves will be known and maintained, and whatever else Germany does with their war dead.
ReplyDeleteWe would expect no less for our own.
Feels like closure to me.
/DW