Humans war against each other all the time, and throughout history hundreds of millions of people have died on the battlefield.
This begs the question, what happens to the bodies?
Like on the beaches of Normandy, thousands of people died. But the beaches, to my knowledge, aren’t filled with dead bones and stuff.
So where did they go? Is there a secret service that collects bodies?
In: 14
Bodies that could be collected would be buried or cremated in mass. If not they would have made a cenotaph for whoever they couldn’t find on the battlefield
The bodies are collected by soldiers, taken to another area to be identified & sent home for a burial service.
Or in cases of mass killings like in Ukraine and WW2 Germany, mass Graves will be dug and bodies piled in.
In many cases bodies are recovered for proper burial or disposal of some sort. In some wars temporary truces would be made to allow each side to collect their dead and wounded. Other times the victorious side may bury the enemy dead in temporary (marked) graves until such time that the bodies can be properly buried or sent back home as part of a peace treaty. In some cases the enemy dead are buried in mass, unmarked, graves or burned. If time does not permit, the enemy dead may simply be left for retrieval by their comrades. There are many factors that can affect what happens.
Generally it is in an army’s best interest to properly dispose of the dead. It can improve relations with your enemy (they see you treating the dead with respect), or be a bargaining chip during peace settlements. Most importantly, dead bodies foul the landscape, spread disease, attract scavengers, and reduce morale of your own forces, so proper disposal is a good idea.
There are special units in militaries whose job it is to collect/clear bodies.
So best case scenario, that unit comes through and properly handled your body.
Middling case scenario is that unit doesn’t find you, and whatever locals attempt to give you a proper burial.
Lower case scenario is you’re just tossed in a hole and covered up like a mass grave.
Worst case scenario is no one ever finds you and your body is left to rot, decay, and he picked apart by scavengers.
When I was in Afghanistan we would collect our own, usually a helicopter would pick up the body so it would get an autopsy. Saw insurgents get a wheel barrow and collect a body of their own once.
What happens to dead bodies after battle depends a lot on the era it happend, and the situation when the soldier died.
In world war 2, whenever possible, bodies were cleaned up after battle. Often first buried next to roads or local graveyards and later on dug up and reburied in those large rememberence graveyards all over Europe. Similair things happend in world war 1, but as many soldiers died in bomb craters, collapesed trenches or other pits on the battlefield and were quickly covered in dirt many more soldiers are still discovered from the great war.
In the past, bodies were sometimes treated with less respect. After Waterloo, many sets of dentures were made from the teeth of all those dead soldiers. Soldiers are often young man, with their teeth still in good condition so made for the ideal “donors”. Later on, most were apparently buried but later on many more were exhumed. This was because the sugar industry needed burned “animal” bones to filter sugarbeet sap. [https://www.thebulletin.be/soldiers-bones-used-make-sugar-after-battle-waterloo-reveal-researchers](https://www.thebulletin.be/soldiers-bones-used-make-sugar-after-battle-waterloo-reveal-researchers)
Mass graves were a more common way to deal with bodies throughout history as digging neat plots is a lot of work, but generally any society burns, buries or at least dumps the bodies of the fallen somewhere of a cliff or in a river. Dead people stink, look scary and spread diseases and attrack predators. Just leaving them was almost never a proper course of action if you live nearby and have the means to clean it up. Looting the dead happend more though in the past.
[removed]
It varies. Of course the bodies are supposed to be collected and sent back home for proper burial, but war is a mess, it doesn’t always work out that way. Might be a while until someone gets around to burying the remains and it might happen in a local ditch with no proper identification depending on who finally does the job. Could even be the remains get scattered by animals and it’s years until somebody stumbles on a skull or something.
My father fought in the WWII battle of Okinawa. Over about three months, 90,000 Japanese soldiers and 140,000 Okinawan civilians were killed. Burial was in mass graves with bulldozers.
Latest Answers