Given we know that even Neanderthals would
bury their dead (even including objects with
the bodies) and various human hunter-gatherer
groups likewise used to bury or cremate people
at specifics sites that functioned as sort
of pilgrimage locations for these nomads,
it should come as no surprise that since the
dawn of known warfare soldiers have pondered
the question of what to do with the bodies
of their fallen comrades and enemies.
So what did various groups actually do throughout
history?
A thing to note before we continue is that
there is a definite gap in the memory of history
in regards to this one specific matter and
historians only have sparse reports of what
happened to the dead of many groups after
battles.
You might think solving this problem would
be simply a matter of locating famous battle
sites and doing some digging to glean a little
more insight, but it turns out even this is
notoriously difficult as we’ll get into
shortly.
That caveat out of the way, on the more definitive
front, it’s noted that the ancient Greeks
made an effort to respect the usual burial
customs of the dead after a battle and collecting
the bodies of the fallen wasn’t uncommon.
For example, following the Battle of Chaeronea
in 338 BC between Philip II of Macedonia and
the Athenians, both sides buried their dead
in accordance with the religious customs of
the period; this was seemingly done both out
of respect for the valor the dead showed in
battle and to appease the gods.
With the exception of the Spartans, most ancient
Greek societies also made efforts to bury
their dead near the city they hailed from
if time allowed it, though for the sake of
practicality, mass graves or the like were
sometimes utilised instead.
In this case, cenotaphs were sometimes erected
near their home city in honor of the fallen.
As noted, an exception to this are the Spartans
who often buried fallen soldiers on the battlefield
they were killed.
Also somewhat unique was that rather than
stripping the dead of valuables, as per Spartan
tradition, each fallen Spartan was buried
with their weapons and armor and their final
resting place was marked by a simple tombstone
with their name and an inscription that read
(translated) “In War”.
This was a special honor among the Spartans.
If one were to die outside of battle, no such
tombstone would be given and the person would
simply be buried in an unmarked grave.
The one exception to that was if a woman died
in child birth, she too would be given the
honor of a tombstone.
As for the Romans, most soldiers paid a small
stipend each month to pay for funeral expenses
should they fall in battle.
As you might expect from this, the Romans
made a conscious effort to recover the bodies
of those who died and, if time allowed it,
would bury or cremate them individually.
If this wasn’t possible, the bodies of soldiers
killed in battle would be collected and given
a mass cremation or burial.
In the event the bodies couldn’t be recovered,
a cenotaph would be erected to serve as a
monument to the individual.
The same cannot be said of later wars where
there seems to have been an almost callous
disregard for the fallen, and looting of the
dead and dying was commonplace.
For example, the Bayeux Tapestry depicting
the Battle of Hastings in 1066 shows soldiers
piling up the bodies of the dead and stripping
them of their valuables.
It’s believed that following this the bodies
were quickly cremated or buried in nearby
mass graves.
It should be noted here, however, that with
the rise of Christianity, mass cremation,
at least for a time, seems to have gone the
way of the dodo in some regions, in favor
of mass graves.
That said, despite the countless battles that
occurred throughout Medieval Europe, archaeologists
have had an extraordinarily difficult time
actually finding any of the bodies.
As one paper published in the Journal of Conflict
Archeology, aptly titled “Where are the
dead of medieval battles?”, notes:
Only a handful of mass graves from late medieval
battles in Western Europe have been subject
to large scale excavation to modern standards.
The principal reason is that these, and indeed
even early modern battlefield graves, have
proven extremely elusive, most being identified
by chance.
Despite a few successes, no combination of
prospecting techniques yet provides a consistently
effective method of locating such small archaeological
features set almost anywhere within a site
covering many square kilometres…
Looking at much better documented times, looting
of the dead was also extraordinarily common
during the extremely deadly Napoleonic Wars,
with soldiers and locals alike pilfering what
they could find after battles.
For example, consider this account from a
British general following the Battle of Heilsberg
in 1807:
The ground between the wood and the Russian
batteries, about a quarter of a mile, was
a sheet of naked human bodies, which friends
and foes had during the night mutually stripped,
although numbers of these bodies still retained
consciousness of their situation.
It was a sight that the eye loathed, but from
which it could not remove.
And yes, as noted there, the severely wounded
weren’t spared the indignity of being robbed
of their worldly possessions as they lay dying.
And worst of all, this was done not just by
their enemies, but comrades as well.
In fact, there are firsthand accounts from
wounded soldiers who went on to survive their
injuries detailing the shock of waking up
completely naked.
Here’s a snippet of one such quote from
a French soldier called Jean Baptiste de Marbot:
Stretched on the snow among the piles of dead
and dying, unable to move in any way, I gradually
and without pain lost consciousness….
I judge that my swoon lasted four hours, and
when I came to my sense I found myself in
this horrible position.
I was completely naked, having nothing on
but my hat and my right boot.
A man of the transport corps, thinking me
dead, had stripped me in the usual fashion,
and wishing to pull off the only boot that
remained, was dragging me by one leg with
his foot against my body.
The jerk which the man gave me no doubt had
restored me to my senses.
I succeeded in sitting up and spitting out
the clots of blood from my throat.
The shock caused by the wind of the ball had
produced such an extravasation of blood, that
my face, shoulders, and chest were black,
while the rest of my body was stained red
by the blood from my wound.
My hat and my hair were full of bloodstained
snow, and as I rolled my haggard eyes I must
have been horrible to see.
Anyhow, the transport man looked the other
way, and went off with my property without
my being able to say a single word to him,
so utterly prostrate was I.
After being stripped of their belongings the
dead, and occasionally still barely living,
would often be buried in mass graves (sometimes
with bodies from both sides unceremoniously
thrown in).
In general, this was either accomplished via
the soldiers themselves doing it, or in many
cases members of the local populace given
the gruesome task.
However, there are accounts of battles where
thousands of bodies were simply left to the
elements.
For example, General Philippe de Ségur states
in 1812,
After passing the Kologa, we marched on, absorbed
in thought, when some of us, raising our eyes,
uttered a cry of horror.
Each one instantly looked about him, and there
lay stretched before us a plain trampled,
bare, and devastated, all the trees cut down
within a few feet from the surface, and farther
off craggy hills, the highest of which appeared
misshapen, and bore a striking resemblance
to an extinguished volcano.
The ground around us was everywhere covered
with fragments of helmets and cuirasses, with
broken drums, gun-stocks, tatters of uniforms,
and standards dyed with blood.
On this desolate spot lay thirty thousand
half-devoured corpses…
It should also be noted here that beyond any
possessions the bodies may have had on them
before being stripped, the bodies themselves
were also of value.
For example, human scavengers would come through
and rob the dead of their teeth, which would
then be used to make dentures.
The Napoleonic Wars, and in particular the
Battle of Waterloo, were such a boon to the
British dental industry in this way that dentures
were known as “Waterloo teeth” in the
UK over a decade after it ended.
Teeth from soldiers were highly sought after
owing to predominately coming from relatively
young men who still had reasonably good teeth,
unlike many others that came from the more
wizened dead.
In one account, one Astley Cooper met just
such a tooth hunter and noted,
Upon asking this Butler, who appeared to be
in a state of great destitution, what might
be his object, he said it was to get teeth…but
when I came to question him upon the means
by which he was to obtain these teeth, he
said, ‘Oh Sir, only let there be a battle,
and there’ll be no want of teeth.
I’ll draw them as fast as the men are knocked
down.
Even more grimly, the bones of the dead of
some of these battles were later collected
and pulverised into fertiliser which was sold
for a modest price across Europe.
To quote an article from the The Observer
written in 1822:
It is now ascertained beyond a doubt, by actual
experiment on an extensive scale, that a dead
soldier is a most valuable article of commerce;
and, for aught known to the contrary, the
good farmers of Yorkshire are, in a great
measure, indebted to the bones of their children
for their daily bread.
It is certainly a singular fact, that Great
Britain should have sent out such multitudes
of soldiers to fight the battles of this country
upon the continent of Europe, and should then
import their bones as an article of commerce
to fatten her soil!
The remains of soldiers were also sometimes
collected for use in souvenirs of major battles.
For example, poet Eaton Stannard Barrett wrote,
“I know one honest gentleman, who has brought
home a real Waterloo thumb, nail and all,
which he preserves in a bottle of gin.”
Moving across the pond and slightly more recently
in history, markedly more respect was shown
for the dead during the American Civil War
where teams of soldiers were tasked with burying
the dead of both sides in simple mass graves,
with great care being taken to ensure most
soldiers received a proper burial.
Finally, to discuss WW1 and WW2, individual
units were largely responsible for the disposal
of their own dead with both Axis and Allied
forces having their own rules for how this
should be handled.
For example, during WW2 Colonel Walther Sonntag
of the Wehrmacht’s Casualty Office issued
a comprehensive guide for military graves
officers detailing how mass graves should
be constructed.
Amongst other things the guidelines indicated
that mass graves should be made as close to
railway lines as possible and feature pathways
with the intention being that they’d eventually
be turned into war cemeteries.
As the war raged on, these guidelines were
largely ignored for the sake of practicality,
leading to, as Der Spiegel puts it, “a surfeit
of grave steles”.
As for the Allies, during WW2 burying the
dead largely fell to individual soldiers,
but some units dedicated to the task did exist,
for example the United States Quartermaster
Graves Registration Service.
Tasked with finding and burying every fallen
American soldier, the Quartermaster Graves
Registration Service have been hailed as some
of the unsung heroes of the War due to the
general lack of recognition they’ve received
since it ended.
Graves Registration units were exceptionally
committed to their task and undertook their
duties with a solemn sense of duty and determination,
going to extraordinary lengths to identify
bodies and perform the appropriate burial
rights depending on the fallen soldier’s
religious affiliation.
When appropriate, GRS units would bury civilian,
allied and axis casualties they came across,
making sure to bury them in well-marked graves,
the locations of which would be passed onto
the relevant authorities.
