How did soldiers handle bodies?

Whenever a battle broke loose and plenty of bodies were left, what would be done with them? Were they all gathered up by the opposing army and buried or burnt or what? And I'm asking on both sides . . . Allies and Axis . . .

 

German: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/bones-of-world-war-soldiers-still-being-excavated-across-europe-a-1029530.html

US Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BuMed) Records.
See also: http://olive-drab.com/od_medical_treatment_ww2.php

 

Here are a few links about the US Graves Registration:

http://www.archives.com/experts/holik-urban-jennifer/graves-registration-service-in-world-war-ii-part-i.html

http://www.archives.com/experts/holik-urban-jennifer/graves-registration-service-in-world-war-ii-part-ii.html

http://www.qmfound.com/graves_registration.htm

 

http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/47480-burial-procedures-gad-1944/

 

I have read that athough the Finns mostly send the dead back home durng Winter War 1939-40 it was usual to strip the dead off their clothes and put them on piles until the battle was over so they could be sent home. Dead man needs no clothes....

 

I just noticed you mostly asked about the enemy side. I guess the Finns put them in a grave for all, the above mentioned was done to our own troops, but we are practically quite proud that we took everybody dead back to their home village to be buried if possible. Even if we piled them after death near the bunkers.

 

Hygiene, cultural, morale and legal obligations meant that every WW2 army had a policy for treating dead bodies,their own, the enemies, and civilians. Soldiers would want to give fallen comrades a decent burial. Families would expect to know where their loved ones were bruied.

By the start of WW1 ID tags would enable bodies to be identified - though this was not always effective given the power of C20th weapons.

If a soldier died, one ID tag was supposed to be taken as evidence, and the second left on the body, which was also marked by a marker and the location recorded. The body was to be buried with one tag and the name and location recorded. The medical system would include a process for burying those who died of wounds while in the casualty chain.

After a battle units would typically try to recover their own dead and bury them, as long as they had access to the battlefield. Plenty of accounts from Italy and North West Europe describe parties combing the battlefield and recovering, and burying dead comrades. The diary entries of Padre Skinner(?) of 24 Lancers in Normandy gives clues about how this worked. A call for volunteers, then the unpleasant task of recovering bodies from inside a burned out tank. The records of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission show bodies often interred in unit or formation cemeteries. Sometimes units would return to battlefields some time later. I know of one unit which sent a burial party in November 1916 to identify the and bury their dead whoi died on 1st july on the Somme after the original battlefield had been captured.

The tactical situation coften prevented speedy burial of the dead. It wasn't possible to bury the dead in the middle of a battle. 80% of British war dead from the 1914-1915 battles in Belgium have no known grave as the British were giving ground. That is also true of around half of the British war dead from the 1916-18 battles. Places like Verdun, Vimy Ridge and the Ypres Salient were so covered in corpses that it could be very difficult to dig anywhere without uncovering dead animals or humans. Thyere is a harrowing account by a tank driver writing of being unable to manouvre the tank anywhere though a mixture of mud and body parts.

The idea that a unit would take their own dead seems to be a hollywood, post Vietnam war idea. I don't know of any WW2 occasions where soldiers lives were deliberately risked to recover the bodies of the dead. There were enough instances in WW1 where soldiers did die trying to recover the body of,say, a comrade or favourite officer from no mans land.

There was, in the British service, a Graves Registration Unit and labour detachments, tasked with burying any undiscovered dead and re-interring the dead from temporary graves to more permanent sites.

There was a difference between how the dead were supposed to be treated and what actually happened. Soldiers were less respectful of enemy, and even, sometimes, civilian dead. Sometimes a fallen enemy might be given a respectful service, other times not. After the war the bodies of the vanquished foes might be treated without normal respects. It is fairly well known that the USSR destroyed German cemeteries. After WW2 the Belgians insisted that the Germans reduced the number of WW1 German cemeteries in Belgium. The compensation policies that offered a reward for the discovery of allied dead, but gave no compensation for German bodies may have encouraged farmers to simply dispose of the remains of dead Germans. In April 1945 the British units which administered Bergan Belsen camp were overwhelmed with 10,000 corpses and bulldozed them into mass graves.

I hope this helps

 

Several things come to mind.

A silver star recipient (France) in the 325 had his body left in a wheel barrow by the Germans along with tags.

A 327 GIR soldier given the task of loading German bodies onto a wagon...at Bastogne they were so frozen he used remnants of a barbed wire to secure them. They were is frozen distorted positions.

Today the graves service in France at the US cemetery refuse to correctly mark the tombstones of 92 soldiers who were 2nd Battalion of the 401 as 82nd Airborne, even when presented with proper records. The stones read 101st Airborne.

 

I recall reading about at least one occasion when this happened. An officer's body was to be retrieved from mountainside, I don't recall whether or not it was found, but certainly some men died in the attempt.

I've also transcribed a personal and very detailed account by M.O. after his unit was ordered to retrieve their dead comrades from a german minefield in Tunisia, a few days after the action and when the unit had been pulled back behind the lines for rest. Apparently some brass complained about the smell when they were travelling along a nearby road. They also found some dead Germans on the battlefield but nothing was said about their burial, or otherwise.

As for treatment of enemy dead my father recalled his battalion being specifically ordered to dig single graves for their own men after their first major action in Normandy, while a dozer was used to 'collect' & bury dead germans in a large crater in a road. I have wondered if their remains are still there.

 

The French North African unit which captured the Col Belvedere north of Cassino in January 1944 took the body of the officer to the summit of the mountain. Leutenant "El Hadji" had sworn to take the hill, bujt died in the assault.

I suspect the bodies did not stay in the crater in the road. Flesh is unsuitable as hard core..

 

There's a brief biography / obituary of the SRY's Padre Skinner here...

Captain Leslie Skinner (left), Padre attached to the Sherwood Rangers, prepares the body of Bombardier Charles Frederick Tyrrell aged 25 of 112 (The West Somerset Yeomanry) Field Regiment, Royal Artillery for burial.
Normandy 14 August 1944.



Here is his obituary written by the late Major John Semken:
The Reverend Leslie Skinner
Devoted military padre in the D-Day firing line
The Rev Leslie Skinner, who has died aged 89, was the first British chaplain to land on the Normandy beaches on D-Day. At 07.25 hours on June 6 1944, he splashed on to Gold Beach with the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, a territorial armoured regiment, under fire in the first wave of the assault. He was injured as his landing craft hit a mine, severely wounding the men on either side of him. But he quickly started gathering up the wounded, and arranging for their evacuation.
As padre, Skinner was supposed to be travelling with the medical officer, but he had obtained - unofficially - a lightweight motorcycle to pursue his self-appointed mission of ensuring, at whatever risk to himself, that no family should suffer the uncertainty of having a relative reported missing, if he could possibly be traced and, if dead, given a Christian burial.
Of all the Sherwood Rangers recorded as missing in action in Normandy, all but one were lost while Skinner was away from the regiment, wounded. As for that one, his commanding officer had to forbid him from venturing onto the battlefield in search of him.
From the first, Skinner refused to allow tank crews any part in the work of recovering the dead from knocked-out tanks, a task which he was, all too often, left to undertake alone. He wrote to the families of each one killed, an action that resulted in a correspondence which continued for many years after the war. His compassion was boundless, practical and unsentimental.
Born in York, the son of a hairdresser, Skinner was educated at Elmfield school, before joining his father's business. He became a local preacher, and later a Methodist minister. His first church appointment, in north India in 1937, was cut short by the onset of deafness, which was to afflict him for the rest of his life.
At the outbreak of war, he joined the Royal Army Chaplains' Department, serving in Persia, Iraq and Egypt before, in late 1942, his deafness was recognised and he was sent home as unfit for overseas service. Passed as fit again in March 1944, he was posted as senior chaplain to the 8th (Independent) Armoured Brigade and attached to the Sherwood Rangers.
His first spell of service in Normandy lasted 20 days, till he was wounded in the head by a mortar shell; his only concern was to recover sufficiently to return to the regiment. This he achieved after only 29 days, recoursing to deceptions best not inquired into.
He remained with the Sherwood Rangers throughout the campaign in northwest Europe, commanding everyone's respect and affection: by popular demand, he wore, on his chaplain's uniform, the regimental shoulder flashes. I remember him as a tower of strength, and a living testimony to the Christian faith.
Skinner was mentioned in dispatches and received the French Croix de Guerre 1940 with palm, and the Belgian Chevalier of the Order of Leopold II with palm. His privately published campaign diary, The Man Who Worked On Sundays, is one of the most vivid and illuminating of all war memoirs.
Back in civilian life, his ministry took him to Higher Broughton, Whitefield, Altrincham, Stockwell, Chessington and Corby. His final appointment was as superintendent minister on the Walton and Weybridge circuit until 1977, though he carried on as a supernumary in Epsom for a further 20 years. His sermons were always challenging and thought-provoking, and his excellent bass voice could lead unaccompanied singing.
Skinner remained a member of the Territorial Army, ending his career as deputy assistant chaplain general TA for the London district with the rank of lieutenant colonel, the highest rank a TA chaplain could hold in peacetime. A great lover of sport, he swam for York, played football, rugby (both union and league) and cricket. In retirement, one of his great pleasures was attending matches at Lord's.
In 1941, he married his fiancée of five years, Etta Atkinson. They had two sons, a daughter and six grandchildren, all of whom survive him.
· The Rev Leslie Skinner, clergyman, born November 26 1911; died October 9 2001

 

The US Army has a manual for everything

https://www.7tharmddiv.org/eto-unks-FM 10-63.pdf

 

The Soviets stripped their dead of clothes and mebbe kinda-sorta cleaned or mended them before issuing them to new soldiers. I read about soldiers getting clothes with blood stains or bullet holes. Glorious Workers' Paradise didn't waste.

 

When? Bathhouse Barry Wars? Desert Storm?