World War One Unidentified Bodies

[peterwarr]

I’m intrigued about the number of WW1 bodies which remain unidentified or undiscovered. I’ve seen an estimate of c80,000 British deaths of that kind on the Western Front, but it’s not clear what evidence led to such a figure. It seems a bit high to me, but I have no evidence either.

Does anyone have a view or evidence, please? Does 80,000 seem about right? If not, what would you suggest? Any published information or www links? Best of all, what might the number for Sheffield be?

Many thanks.

Peter

[History dude]

This seems to answer a lot of your questions:

http://www.greatwar.co.uk/article/ww1-war-graves.htm

[peterwarr]

Many thanks. That's where my estimate of 80,000 came from:

"Indeed, the German war graves agency, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräber Fürsorge (VDK) considers that there are still possibly approximately 80,000 German soldiers who fell in action in Flanders and whose remains cannot be accounted for. There is a similar figure for British casualties whose remains have never been found. They are all still “missing” in Flanders."

There's no evidence for the suggestion, and it looks to me like a bit of a guess. I haven't been able to locate any other estimates.

Peter

[History dude]

Since a lot of records of soldiers were lost or destroyed it will almost be impossible to get a good estimate of those killed and never found. You will also have deserters who survived and want the authorities thinking they are dead. It was also possible to claim a war pension. So the widow could keep that, but live with her man as-well.

I suspect many estimates come out of recall numbers after engagements.

Sadly some of the big guns hits and explosions would have meant that in some cases the bits of the men left were some messed up it would have been hard to tell how many got killed. Finding a leg, for example, doesn't mean the man was dead! The rest of him might have been found by medics and taken to the hospital. That could still apply to the body parts found today.

[peterwarr]

Great, thank you.

I’d been thinking that somewhere there must be a calculation: the total number of troops in the War Office register MINUS the number of those accounted for at the end of the war. I assume that that number would represent the “missing” men.

But we don’t seem to be able to find it!

[Edmund]

Another thing to take into consideration: I'm told that after the end of the war there was a bounty for handing in the remains of allied soldiers, though not German. Therefore the farmers made sure that all the bodies they found were allied and not German, by the expedient of handing them in with khaki uniforms not grey. That would throw the numbers out.

[Guest Trefcon]

These are the numbers for Sheffield men whose name appears on various memorials around the world that have no known grave.

Arras Memorial - 211

Basra Memorial - 12

Brookwood Memorial (UK) - 1

Chatby Memorial - 1

Chatham Naval Memorial - 37

Delhi Memorial (India Gate) - 5

Doiran Memorial - 13

Giavera Memorial - 1

Helles Memorial - 74

Jerusalem Memorial - 2

Karachi 1914 - 1918 War Memorial - 1

Kirkee 1914 - 1918 Memorial - 4

La Ferte-Sous-Jouarre Memorial - 29

Le Touret Memorial - 48

Loos Memorial - 102

Madras 1914 - 1918 War Memorial, Chennai - 4

Mikra Memorial - 3

Nieuport Memorial - 7

Ploegsteert Memorial - 85

Plymouth Naval Memorial - 22

Portsmouth Naval Memorial - 81

Pozieres Memorial - 57

Savona Memorial - 1

Soissons Memorial - 45

Thiepval Memorial - 451

Tower Hill Memorial - 25

Tyne Cot Memorial - 294

Vis-En-Artois Memorial - 57

Ypre (Menin Gate) Memorial - 295

Total - 2075

Search criteria used -

Putting the word 'Sheffield' into a search engine to search each memorial for that word in the 'additional information field', ie the 'field' on the CWGC site that holds family/where lived details for each man. The information in the additional information field was supplied by NoK, they were sent a 'Final Verification Form' to fill in and send back to CWGC, if the family didn't recieve/fill in/ lose etc, the form, then that is why you often see blank 'fields' on CWGC site. So, there could be more 'Sheffield' men on the memorials but with no family details on CWGC. Also some of results could have thrown up things like the surname 'Sheffield', or men living on various 'Sheffield' roads, or living at other 'Sheffield's. I think though that the figure of 2075 would grow if a really in depth search was done.

Dean.