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
Depends on the war.
Some battlefields, especially really old ones, the dead were basically left to the crows, and the bones either decomposed or got buried in sediment eventually. Bodies might be looted for armor and valuables before scavengers got to them. It depends on the customs of the peoples in question (and whether they had manpower to spare for burying dead combatants).
In the [Napoleonic wars](https://shannonselin.com/2016/07/napoleonic-battlefield-cleanup/), for example, there were a LOT of casualties. Only officers or certain specific people were buried separately. Most of the dead were just pushed into mass graves, often by hired local peasants. ETA: Or worse. Some of them literally had their body parts scavenged for, e.g., dentures (aka “[Waterloo teeth](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33085031)”), and even fertilizer.
More modern armies usually have designated burial details, whose job it is to come through after the front moves and try to identify remains, then either ship them home or to an appropriate burial site for interment.
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