THIS book tells the largely unknown story of what happened to the bodies of German and British service personnel and prisoners of war who died in enemy lands in the First and Second World Wars (Feature, 2 May). Initially buried in churchyards near where they died, they were later exhumed and collected together in mass national cemeteries.
The cemetery for Germans who had died in the UK was established at Cannock Chase, in Staffordshire, only in the late 1960s, after the signing of a treaty in 1959 by John Profumo, Secretary of State for War.
The argument of Tim Grady in this meticulously researched study is that when bodies lay in local graveyards, they fostered good relations between former foes. He recounts many instances of acts of kindness and compassion on the part of the British towards those who had been their enemies. Typical was the care taken by an Anglican vicar, the Revd R. A. Jones, who kept a benevolent eye over the graves of 222 Germans who had died of influenza in the final stage of the First World War while being held in the large POW camp in Brocton, Staffordshire. From the war’s end, Jones regularly placed wreaths on the graves and took photographs to send to relatives of the dead.
Grady, who is Professor of Modern History at the University of Chester, argues that with the exhumation of bodies from graveyards in places near where they had died and their reburial in mass national cemeteries, something was lost in terms of reconciliation between former enemies. He is also scathing about the way in which war graves and the wider commemoration of the dead in the two world wars have been hijacked by the booming heritage industry and become “visitor experiences”.
This is a thoughtful and moving study of an overlooked and neglected aspect of the terrible mass conflicts of the 20th century. It is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of nearly 40 illustrations, many of them showing harrowing scenes of graves and burials. A particularly poignant one shows Ernest Barr, a pharmacist from Northern Ireland, standing by the grave of his son, Mackenzie, who had been killed while carrying out a bombing raid over Hanau, in Germany, in 1945. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Barr travelled through occupied Germany, eventually making it to a suburb of Hanau, where a woman recalled a British aeroplane crashing, and took him to the cemetery.
The authorities allowed a recent unmarked grave to be exhumed and Barr recognised his son from his hair, teeth, and the shape of his head. He had a white crucifix erected and for several years afterwards exchanged letters and photographs with local residents who looked after the grave. In Grady’s words, “the presence of the enemy dead had started to draw the living together.”
The Revd Dr Ian Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Cultural and Spiritual History at the University of St Andrews and author of Breathers of an Ampler Day: Victorian views of heaven (Sacristy Press, 2023).
Burying the Enemy: The story of those who cared for the dead in two world wars
Tim Grady
Yale £25
(978-0-300-27397-7)
Church Times Bookshop £22.50