Honouring the men and women who died serving their countries during wartime became an established practise in civilised countries during the 20th Century, with the graves and memorials of both friend and foe being treated with equal respect. Regrettably, there are an increasing number of notable exceptions to this general rule. However, the aberrant behaviour is still so remarkable that it is newsworthy, and it brings the vandals the condemnation and disrespect of civilised people.
Berenice on this forum, and Meurig elsewhere, have done sterling work in recording the monuments and memorials of the Boer War, as have many other people in all those parts of the world touched by this war. Not only did this conflict bridge the turn of a Century and see a change in the British Monarchy, it was also remarkable for being a link between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ in warfare, as well as some international and internal political relationships. I wonder if it also set a new standard for memorialising war?
I have recently become interested in the 19th Century history of parts of Europe. This venture into the nearly-unknown-to-me has benefitted by its coincidence with the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. There has been more than enough in recorded histories and in media reports to keep me interested and awake during the day.
Probably because I had never thought about it before, I was amazed to learn that, in the whole of the past 200 years, there has been only one carefully documented excavation of the grave of an on-site Waterloo battlefield casualty. According to Internet sources, the body was that of a Hanoverian soldier serving with Wellington’s army. He was evidently a member of the King’s German Legion, and not one of the Hanoverian regiments. He is tangible proof of the presence at Waterloo of Wellington’s Continental allies.
The survival of this burial was evidently a matter of good luck rather than good management. After the battle, only men of high rank had their bodies taken elsewhere for burial and appropriate commemoration. The rest went into mass graves, but only after enterprising scavengers had stripped them of valuables. This included the removal of sound teeth from bodies, which were later sold for implantation into the toothless jaws of paying customers in various parts of Europe. It was also reported that, later, the skeletonised remains of the battlefield casualties were excavated and ground up to serve as agricultural fertiliser. By modern standards, this was scandalous and disrespectful treatment of men who had fought and died to bring the Napoleonic Wars to an end.
How, where and when did this apparently barbaric behaviour in 1815 evolve into the civilised memorialising of Boer War casualties less than 100 years later?
Brett
