Given we know that even Neanderthals would bury their dead (even including objects with
the bodies) and various human hunter-gatherer groups likewise used to bury or cremate people
at specifics sites that functioned as sort of pilgrimage locations for these nomads,
it should come as no surprise that since the dawn of known warfare soldiers have pondered
the question of what to do with the bodies of their fallen comrades and enemies.
So what did various groups actually do throughout history?
A thing to note before we continue is that there is a definite gap in the memory of history
in regards to this one specific matter and historians only have sparse reports of what
happened to the dead of many groups after battles.
You might think solving this problem would be simply a matter of locating famous battle
sites and doing some digging to glean a little more insight, but it turns out even this is
notoriously difficult as we’ll get into shortly.
That caveat out of the way, on the more definitive front, it’s noted that the ancient Greeks
made an effort to respect the usual burial customs of the dead after a battle and collecting
the bodies of the fallen wasn’t uncommon.
For example, following the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC between Philip II of Macedonia and
the Athenians, both sides buried their dead in accordance with the religious customs of
the period; this was seemingly done both out of respect for the valor the dead showed in
battle and to appease the gods.
With the exception of the Spartans, most ancient Greek societies also made efforts to bury
their dead near the city they hailed from if time allowed it, though for the sake of
practicality, mass graves or the like were sometimes utilised instead.
In this case, cenotaphs were sometimes erected near their home city in honor of the fallen.
As noted, an exception to this are the Spartans who often buried fallen soldiers on the battlefield
they were killed.
Also somewhat unique was that rather than stripping the dead of valuables, as per Spartan
tradition, each fallen Spartan was buried with their weapons and armor and their final
resting place was marked by a simple tombstone with their name and an inscription that read
(translated) “In War”.
This was a special honor among the Spartans.
If one were to die outside of battle, no such tombstone would be given and the person would
simply be buried in an unmarked grave.
The one exception to that was if a woman died in child birth, she too would be given the
honor of a tombstone.
As for the Romans, most soldiers paid a small stipend each month to pay for funeral expenses
should they fall in battle.
As you might expect from this, the Romans made a conscious effort to recover the bodies
of those who died and, if time allowed it, would bury or cremate them individually.
If this wasn’t possible, the bodies of soldiers killed in battle would be collected and given
a mass cremation or burial.
In the event the bodies couldn’t be recovered, a cenotaph would be erected to serve as a
monument to the individual.
The same cannot be said of later wars where there seems to have been an almost callous
disregard for the fallen, and looting of the dead and dying was commonplace.
For example, the Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Battle of Hastings in 1066 shows soldiers
piling up the bodies of the dead and stripping them of their valuables.
It’s believed that following this the bodies were quickly cremated or buried in nearby
mass graves.
It should be noted here, however, that with the rise of Christianity, mass cremation,
at least for a time, seems to have gone the way of the dodo in some regions, in favor
of mass graves.
That said, despite the countless battles that occurred throughout Medieval Europe, archaeologists
have had an extraordinarily difficult time actually finding any of the bodies.
As one paper published in the Journal of Conflict Archeology, aptly titled “Where are the
dead of medieval battles?”, notes:
Only a handful of mass graves from late medieval battles in Western Europe have been subject
to large scale excavation to modern standards.
The principal reason is that these, and indeed even early modern battlefield graves, have
proven extremely elusive, most being identified by chance.
Despite a few successes, no combination of prospecting techniques yet provides a consistently
effective method of locating such small archaeological features set almost anywhere within a site
covering many square kilometres…
Looking at much better documented times, looting of the dead was also extraordinarily common
during the extremely deadly Napoleonic Wars, with soldiers and locals alike pilfering what
they could find after battles.
For example, consider this account from a British general following the Battle of Heilsberg
in 1807:
The ground between the wood and the Russian batteries, about a quarter of a mile, was
a sheet of naked human bodies, which friends and foes had during the night mutually stripped,
although numbers of these bodies still retained consciousness of their situation.
It was a sight that the eye loathed, but from which it could not remove.
And yes, as noted there, the severely wounded weren’t spared the indignity of being robbed
of their worldly possessions as they lay dying.
And worst of all, this was done not just by their enemies, but comrades as well.
In fact, there are firsthand accounts from wounded soldiers who went on to survive their
injuries detailing the shock of waking up completely naked.
Here’s a snippet of one such quote from a French soldier called Jean Baptiste de Marbot:
Stretched on the snow among the piles of dead and dying, unable to move in any way, I gradually
and without pain lost consciousness….
I judge that my swoon lasted four hours, and when I came to my sense I found myself in
this horrible position.
I was completely naked, having nothing on but my hat and my right boot.
A man of the transport corps, thinking me dead, had stripped me in the usual fashion,
and wishing to pull off the only boot that remained, was dragging me by one leg with
his foot against my body.
The jerk which the man gave me no doubt had restored me to my senses.
I succeeded in sitting up and spitting out the clots of blood from my throat.
The shock caused by the wind of the ball had produced such an extravasation of blood, that
my face, shoulders, and chest were black, while the rest of my body was stained red
by the blood from my wound.
My hat and my hair were full of bloodstained snow, and as I rolled my haggard eyes I must
have been horrible to see.
Anyhow, the transport man looked the other way, and went off with my property without
my being able to say a single word to him, so utterly prostrate was I.
After being stripped of their belongings the dead, and occasionally still barely living,
would often be buried in mass graves (sometimes with bodies from both sides unceremoniously
thrown in).
In general, this was either accomplished via the soldiers themselves doing it, or in many
cases members of the local populace given the gruesome task.
However, there are accounts of battles where thousands of bodies were simply left to the
elements.
For example, General Philippe de Ségur states in 1812,
After passing the Kologa, we marched on, absorbed in thought, when some of us, raising our eyes,
uttered a cry of horror.
Each one instantly looked about him, and there lay stretched before us a plain trampled,
bare, and devastated, all the trees cut down within a few feet from the surface, and farther
off craggy hills, the highest of which appeared misshapen, and bore a striking resemblance
to an extinguished volcano.
The ground around us was everywhere covered with fragments of helmets and cuirasses, with
broken drums, gun-stocks, tatters of uniforms, and standards dyed with blood.
On this desolate spot lay thirty thousand half-devoured corpses…
It should also be noted here that beyond any possessions the bodies may have had on them
before being stripped, the bodies themselves were also of value.
For example, human scavengers would come through and rob the dead of their teeth, which would
then be used to make dentures.
The Napoleonic Wars, and in particular the Battle of Waterloo, were such a boon to the
British dental industry in this way that dentures were known as “Waterloo teeth” in the
UK over a decade after it ended.
Teeth from soldiers were highly sought after owing to predominately coming from relatively
young men who still had reasonably good teeth, unlike many others that came from the more
wizened dead.
In one account, one Astley Cooper met just such a tooth hunter and noted,
Upon asking this Butler, who appeared to be in a state of great destitution, what might
be his object, he said it was to get teeth…but when I came to question him upon the means
by which he was to obtain these teeth, he said, ‘Oh Sir, only let there be a battle,
and there’ll be no want of teeth.
I’ll draw them as fast as the men are knocked down.
Even more grimly, the bones of the dead of some of these battles were later collected
and pulverised into fertiliser which was sold for a modest price across Europe.
To quote an article from the The Observer written in 1822:
It is now ascertained beyond a doubt, by actual experiment on an extensive scale, that a dead
soldier is a most valuable article of commerce; and, for aught known to the contrary, the
good farmers of Yorkshire are, in a great measure, indebted to the bones of their children
for their daily bread.
It is certainly a singular fact, that Great Britain should have sent out such multitudes
of soldiers to fight the battles of this country upon the continent of Europe, and should then
import their bones as an article of commerce to fatten her soil!
The remains of soldiers were also sometimes collected for use in souvenirs of major battles.
For example, poet Eaton Stannard Barrett wrote, “I know one honest gentleman, who has brought
home a real Waterloo thumb, nail and all, which he preserves in a bottle of gin.”
Moving across the pond and slightly more recently in history, markedly more respect was shown
for the dead during the American Civil War where teams of soldiers were tasked with burying
the dead of both sides in simple mass graves, with great care being taken to ensure most
soldiers received a proper burial.
Finally, to discuss WW1 and WW2, individual units were largely responsible for the disposal
of their own dead with both Axis and Allied forces having their own rules for how this
should be handled.
For example, during WW2 Colonel Walther Sonntag of the Wehrmacht’s Casualty Office issued
a comprehensive guide for military graves officers detailing how mass graves should
be constructed.
Amongst other things the guidelines indicated that mass graves should be made as close to
railway lines as possible and feature pathways with the intention being that they’d eventually
be turned into war cemeteries.
As the war raged on, these guidelines were largely ignored for the sake of practicality,
leading to, as Der Spiegel puts it, “a surfeit of grave steles”.
As for the Allies, during WW2 burying the dead largely fell to individual soldiers,
but some units dedicated to the task did exist, for example the United States Quartermaster
Graves Registration Service.
Tasked with finding and burying every fallen American soldier, the Quartermaster Graves
Registration Service have been hailed as some of the unsung heroes of the War due to the
general lack of recognition they’ve received since it ended.
Graves Registration units were exceptionally committed to their task and undertook their
duties with a solemn sense of duty and determination, going to extraordinary lengths to identify
bodies and perform the appropriate burial rights depending on the fallen soldier’s
religious affiliation.
When appropriate, GRS units would bury civilian, allied and axis casualties they came across,
making sure to bury them in well-marked graves, the locations of which would be passed onto
the relevant authorities.