Off Topic Somme Anniversary
- Thread starter sb_73
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If you ever come over and fancy a trip let me know Aussie.
When I was in Ypres a few years ago we met an Aussie army padre and a few members of a couple of Aussie families. In a bar naturally. Turns out that with ploughing and organised excavations they are constantly finding the remains of soldiers on the battlefields. When the dog tags/means of identification (often involving dedicated detective work including DNA testing) are found as well wheels are put in motion to give these men a proper burial, families are tracked down etc (actually they all get a proper burial, not just the identified ones). The families were over as the remains of a couple of their forebears had been found, the padre was officiating. So those lines of perfectly tended white headstones (the most poignant of which simply read 'A Soldier of the Great War' for unidentified remains) in the tranquil cemeteries are being added to every year.
They also dig up a lot of unexploded shells. A third of the million plus shells lobbed at the German lines 24 hours a day for the 7 days before the attack on the Somme didn't go off. And bits of the ones that did are still around, I have a lump of shrapnel picked up in a field acting as a paperweight on my desk.
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