A terrible harvest
A dead German soldier at La Boiselle, 1 July 1916. NAM 2002-02-902-58
Since 1918 the battlefields of France and Belgium have yielded a terrible harvest. Every year the bodies of lost soldiers of World War One (1914-1918) are being unearthed. The following pages, supporting material for the recent ‘Finding the Fallen’ exhibition at the National Army Museum, tell the story of just a few of them.
The battlefield under your feet
The cemeteries and monuments of the War are the most visible reminder of the events and human cost of the conflict. For many visitors to the Western Front they are all they see. How many visitors ever really look at the landscape around them, or realise that the trenches, craters and debris of war still lie just inches below their feet?
Trenches cleared
Interior of a British trench c1916.
NAM 2002-02-902-135
After the War it was proposed that the devastated zone, from the Belgian coast to Switzerland, be left as a memorial and reminder of the War. But the farmers, citizens and homeowners wanted to return and take up their pre-war lives.
So over many years the battlefields were cleared and the trenches filled by Allied soldiers, labour companies, and German prisoners of war. Even so, tonnes of abandoned equipment, munitions and other debris were left buried in the remains of the trench systems.
Thousands missing
This buried landscape also conceals the remains of fallen soldiers, buried where they fell, lost in the mud and chaos of war. They were never found in the battlefield clearances during or after the War and number more than 100,000 from British and Commonwealth armies alone. Likewise, the remains of thousands of German soldiers lie undiscovered and hidden from history.
Members of NML excavating at Auchonvilliers © NML
Now, for the first time in 90 years the evidence left behind is being properly examined by battlefield archaeologists. In the past few years two groups of archaeologists, forensics experts and military historians have begun a systematic archaeological examination of the Western Front. No Man’s Land (NML) is based in Britain, and the Association for World War Archaeology (AWA) in Belgium.
‘from Switzerland to the Sea’
The Western Front stretched for over 400 miles (640 kilometres). So far the archaeological teams have examined only a tiny fraction of the trench system, mainly on the Somme in France and around Ypres in Belgium.
France and Belgium, the location of the digs.
The exhibition illustrated the discoveries made in their excavations of five front line trenches conducted in 2003 and 2005. Sites were chosen to show the development of the trench system in 1914, 1915, 1916 and 1917. The aim was to reveal and record the life of soldiers in the trenches, in a way not attempted before. Sites for investigation were chosen for a variety of reasons: proposals for a motorway extension threatened to destroy areas of the battlefields forever; landowners have been faced with the problem of wartime debris effecting cultivation. Other sites were selected to provided a contrast with preserved trenches.
