What happened after death in WW2?

[Bulletpoint]

WW2 continues to baffle me with its scale, horrors and not least logistics. Lots of questions popping up, sorry if this is a bit ghoulish, but it's about war after all.

I have been thinking about what happened with all the dead soldiers. Were they left lying in fields and rubble, or were they gathered and buried, and if so, who did that, if their company had to move on?

Who had the task of pulling out charred remains from armoured vehicles?

What happened with the enemy dead?

And were letters sent home to each fallen soldier's family? If so, who wrote all these letters, was it really the squad leader who took the time from fighting to write individual letters? What if the squad leader was also dead?

Did they write truthfully, or did they just make up some heroic propaganda?

Did they write individual letters, or did they just use some copy/paste standard ones?

[Stalins Organ]

In the US Mortuary Affairs has the responsibility for dealing with the deceased - including battlefield recovery of remains.

not sure what the Brits do/did - this article about WW1 casualties seems to show that dead were initially handled by the medical corps, and the Graves Commission looked after the actual burial.

I suspect the Royal Army Medical Corps has responsibility on the battlefield, but haven't found much to support this.

[JonS]

British padres appear to have spent a fair bit of their time dealing with the deceased. Some of the better padres refused all assistance from within their battalions, figuring that it was a) part of their job, and better not to burden the fighting troops with that, in addition to all their other woes.

there's a good generalised description here:

http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2Chap-c10-3.html

[George MC]

I read an account (May possibly have been by Ken Tout) that an armoured unit's padre recovered the dead crews of his units KOd tanks ID'd the bodies/remains and arranged their burial.

For the reasons JonS outline the padre reckoned the less the crews knew about the reality of death in a tank the better.

[Affentitten]

As for letters home, it would be the man's direct officer. Additional letters may have been sent by company level and battalion commanders and the padre too, though I guess this would depend on how often and how many casualties were concerned. Obviously a telegram was the first notice of death. The letters would have followed weeks or months later when time allowed. I guess as time went on they were mainly formulaic but a good officer would drop in one or two little personal points to ensure that connection "He was well know to the platoon for his footballing skills...", "He often spoke fondly of the farm and his desire to get back there after all this is over..."

As for their veracity, they were not neccesarily propaganda, but straight reporting of what happened was unlikely to be helpful. "Your son died clutching his shrapnel-ridden entrails after screaming for half a day." wouldn't pass muster.

[Sublime]

On the German and Russian side then? Were all those Wehrmacht cemeteries in Russia just left behind? I cant see the Russians coming across a field of crosses with stahlhelms and not knocking them down or doing something to trash the place.

And what of the Russian dead? Just left where buried?

Oh and also as far as the US dead - IIRC the families after WW2 were asked if they'd like the remains to stay in situ or be taken back to the US for re-burial. However I believe after WW2 US dead were almost universally flown/shipped back to the US...

[Stalins Organ]

Check out Sologubovka Cemetery and the German War Graves Commission

[Seedorf81]

There's a documentary somewhere (The Historychannel mavbe? it's somewhere on Youtube..))about an US WW2 officer who was in charge of a unit that recovered and repaired damaged and destroyed US-tanks.

He describes how they had to remove the remains of dead tankers..

I cannot imagine how the people that had to bury the mangled bodies of battlefield-victims ever could have a reasonable emotional life again..

[JonS]

Cooper is an interesting chap. When he talks about what he did his book is quite interesting.

When he talks about anything else, in particular things which he had no personal experience of - which he does far too often - his book is utter balls.

The above snippet from the Mythtory Channel is exactly the same. Most of it is utter balls ... and that's aside from all the footage of other random tanks (M-10s, Grants, and was that a Chaffee at 00:33?) being passed off as Shermans. The 'Cologne' footage from 8:00 onwars is quite good though - someone has done a pretty good job stablising it.

Oh, and Ned Barnett needs to hand back his "Military Historian" club card. Immediately.

[Wodin]

I'm sure I read the German graves where destroyed once the Russians started taking back the land. I imagine they dug them up and dumped them in mass graves. Or they just wiped out all signs there was a cemetery there but left the bodies buried.

[Wodin]

Check out Sologubovka Cemetery and the German War Graves Commission

Interesting ..thanks.

[Dave G.]

If I were in the Russians' shoes and I found remains belonging to those who came to my homeland in a crusade to kill tens of millions of my people and then turn the rest into slaves, I'd want to erase them. Let their descendants never know their resting place. In fact, I'd be very tempted to feed the remains into a creamatorium to obliterate them. I certainly wouldn't let them be re-buried within the boundaries of my nation. Of course, I am not a Russian. When I talked to one who was here working as a programmer, he told me that he didn't hold it against them. He figured that they were just ordinary human beings caught up in the war who didn't have much of a choice in the matter.