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| Le Caillou Napoléon's Last Headquarters (Source) |
I remember the first time I visited that small farmhouse depicted above, it was either 1992 or 1993 (it's been long enough that I don't remember the first time I visited the Waterloo battlefield). In the backyard stands a small stone building, more of a shed really, which is filled with bone shards, recovered from the battlefield which lies about a mile and a half north of the farm.
I remember I felt, something. Looking upon those old bones and thinking that some 178 years before, these shards were once part of young men, from multiple countries, arrayed for battle on the morning of the 18th of June, 1815. At the end of the day their shattered bodies lay in the torn up fields south of Brussels. Hastily buried, later many of them were dug up for use as fertilizer or for refining sugar from sugar beets (read this).
Thousands of dead men (and allegedly at least one woman, stories exist of a dead French dragoon on the field discovered to be a woman) and horses all lying dead (or wounded, only to die later of their wounds) after a single day of combat.
Rather sobering.
Imagine then, how I felt upon entering the building to see an entire skeleton, stretched out in a glass case, purportedly of a French hussar, whose body was recovered some time after the battle. (You can see that here, due to copyright concerns I won't reproduce the photo.)
I was rather bothered by the experience. It seemed disrespectful at the very least. I suppose it's better than being dug up and used for fertilizer. What does happen to the bodies after a big battle? We Are the Mighty has a good article here.
This video also provides some insight as to what happens to the bodies after the battle is over.
Not sure what has me going down this somewhat morbid path today. We humans think a lot about what happens when we die, at least what happens to our spirit, that intangible "thing" which defines us as a person. I don't often think about what happens to our physical remains, today I did.
Getting old is an interesting thing. I've decided not to dwell too much upon it, just let it happen, see where the ride takes me.
It's been good so far ...
Like the 7000 odd dead after Gettysburg, and not even a Bobcat to help out.
ReplyDeleteYes, like that.
DeleteBack in the old days (civil war era) there were a lot of people far more familiar with a pick & shovel I'd guess ... go far enough back you could leave them where they fell.
DeleteWhat did they do with the bodies when a third to half the people died from the plague in a short time?
They burned them.
DeleteA much more sanitary technique.
DeleteBG
A lot of wood but probably less labor.
DeleteBG - Very!
DeleteRob - A layer of wood, a layer of bodies, another layer of wood, more bodies, etc.
DeleteBurned them, mass graves, stuff like that.
DeleteAbout all you can do.
DeleteI'll start with the plague, over here in the UK at the time of the Black Death bodies weren't burnt. We have 'plague pits'. Bodies were dumped in a mass grave and that was it. When you think about it a medieval peasant would rather use wood for cooking and heating than burning the dead. A hole is easier to dig. Plague pits turn up all over the place round here. An internet search on 'plague pits' turns up some interesting results. Some were unearthed during major civil engineering projects in London when burial pits from the plague of 1664-5 were discovered.
DeleteDuring WW1 the sheer amount of casualties staggers belief. On the British/Commonwealth side there were C580 fatalities a day on average. As a result the Imperial, later Commonwealth War Graves Commission was formed and it laid down the rules to be followed with regard to how the graves were laid out. The size of the gravestone was to be standard, there was to be no repatriation of bodies, the best architects and gardeners of the time decided the layout of the graveyards, which follow a standard format. A lot of the graveyards were sited where there were field hospitals/dressing stations so there are many small graveyard scattered along the Western Front. I will bow to no one in saying that the British War Cemeteries were one of the finest achievements of the time.
On a final note at one stage in my career I was involved in contingency planning for civil emergencies. Obviously mass casualties were considered so you do 'think the unthinkable', spaces were earmarked for mass graves using public parks etc. Mass fatalities are a nightmare and any incident with above 100 fatalities in one incident will stress the capacity of a modern state in peacetime.
Retired
Retired
I can vouch for the War Graves Commission doing a superb job, my Great Uncle is buried in one of those cemeteries.
DeleteI think 9/11 proves your last point.
Well, there is a cheery way to start a Wednesday!
ReplyDeleteActually, very fascinating. The comment about the farmers of Yorkshire feeding themselves through the bodies of their children is both incredibly jarring and strangely prophetic.
Yeah, kinda morbid, but a topic which is often overlooked in history.
DeleteThere are a number of Classical Greek references (as the video notes) about the Classical Greeks always setting a truce following a battle to recover and bury the dead. To not do so was considered impious and and a violation of the laws of war.
DeleteI seem to recall reading that somewhere, very civilized those ancient Greeks!
DeleteSarge,
ReplyDeleteWell, let's start on a high note. I like the new style. The font is very easy to read and isn't cluttered. I also like the blue. It adds a bit of pizazz to the page, beside which it also reflects our uniform from back in the day. Not that Navy Blue isn't good also.
As to the content, Holy Cow! I can't imagine the smell. Gotta do what you gotta do, but, sleeping at night must have been terrible for the workers. I'd hate to think they'd get used to it, but then again, I'd hate to think about what sleeping would be if they didn't.
juvat
The day after Waterloo people came down from Brussels to see the field. Obviously these were people who were well off and had the time and means to travel. Many commented on the smell. I can't imagine what that would have been like.
DeleteThe new font does rather pop, I'll stick with it for a while though it does take some extra effort.
content is always great; font is much easier to read (for me anyway): as opposed to the font in the comments
ReplyDeleteI'm looking into what I can do with the font in the comments.
DeleteSarge, this might help
Deletehttps://www.mybloggerlab.com/2013/06/how-to-create-custom-style-comments.html
juvat
Yes, I've been examining that this morning, fitting it in between bouts of actual work. WHY AM I NOT RETIRED?
DeleteWow, Sarge! Weighty thoughts for a Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteIn discussions with my Mother before she died, I pointed out that her body was the empty box she came in; for once our Spirit leaves, that's what it is. Not to be disrespectful but an empty body then becomes something to be disposed of in a considerate manner.
The sheer scale of Waterloo's dead would have created heath issues; decomposing corpses would wreak havoc with the water supply. I find myself thinking about the incredibly important and almost totally ignored service of our Graves Registration people. Certainly not a job I'd want; but certainly a job I'd want done properly.I thought the portrayal of the morgue technician in the TV series "China Beach" was really well done.
Boat Guy
The Graves Registration people are among the unsung heroes of our nation's wars.
DeleteI remember in the book "There's a War to Be Won" about Graves Registration. Before a battle, they would select spots on higher ground and well drained, then mark potential gravesites with small, inconspicuous stones. A soldier may have walked past his grave and never knew it.
DeleteSeems plausible.
DeleteI have a hard time imagining what it was like at places like the Somme were corpses sat for months in trenches and no man land. Not a one or two day battle, the lines moved back and forth and thousands just buried as unidentified. Alexandria Churchill's book Somme paints a grizzly picture of the place
ReplyDeleteThe Somme was indeed a special horror.
DeleteI was contemplating how they dealt with the dead Back In The Day after reading in Isaiah, and the angel slaying 185,000 of the enemy of the Hebrews. Got to thinking about the Somme, Sharpsburg, etc. etc. etc. Thousands dead, plus the amputated parts, plus the horses and other animals - and it takes a hellacious big hole to bury just one horse, much less hundreds. The massive manpower needed to do the job, and the stench from the bloated corpses laying out in the heat and humidity. Then, in some cases, exhuming them some months later from the hasty graves and reburying them.
ReplyDeleteMust have had many contemplating the hereafter, the possible torments of Hell, and salvation.
And then, in the next generation, do it all over again.
I like the photo - is that you driving?
Indeed!
Delete(I'm standing over by the entrance.)
Never been to Waterloo, but a few years back I visited the Ossuary at Verdun. There are crypts underneath it where they inter the bones of those that were found on the battlefield and can be viewed (through glass panels) from the rear of the building. A similar feeling.
ReplyDeleteI must get to Verdun one of these days.
DeleteConcur that the trial blue font is a bit easier to read.
ReplyDeleteDuring the Civil War, many were buried on the battlefield, and later exhumed reburied on formal cemeteries. There are some rather grisly photos of workers (mostly Blacks) with decomposed remains dug up for transfer. You can find them if you like I rather not see them again.
But, in the 19th century and earlier, death was a far more common event, during childbirth, childhood diseases, untreated infections, food borne illnesses, accidental injuries, workplace events, and of course warfare. Most of America was rural, and families did what they had to do, not the modern convenience of doctors and undertakers to take care of the dead. Family plots on their own land were the norm (except in urban areas).
Dittos on the kudos and respect for those in the graves registration business. Politicians sending others to war should be conscripted into grave registration jobs.
John Blackshoe
I have seen a film clip of SeaBees burying the Japanese dead. They would excavate a huge hole with Cats, but the bodies were laid down in neat, tidy rows, before they pushed the soil back into the hole.
ReplyDelete