eli5, what happens to the dead bodies in a battlefield

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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?

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13 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

They were once left where they fell, and stripped for anything useful by scavengers who followed the wagon train. Apparently, the bodies of those who died in the Battle of Waterloo were left pied up where they fell. Some years later the piles of bones were collected and sold for BoneMeal. They were shipped to Hull in England, ground up to powder, then sold in Doncaster Market for fertiliser. At one time the British army buried their dead where they fell, there are many military graveyards around the Empire countries.

Anonymous 0 Comments

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.

Anonymous 0 Comments

If the battle is protracted, without a winner, sometimes arrangements will be made for a temporarily truce so that both sides can collect their dead. This was done on the Western Front of WWI, where the sides fought in more or less the same exact space for weeks or months on end.

If one side or the other wins the battle, they will treat the bodies according to time and resources available and their feelings towards the dead. The bodies of your soldiers are often treated more carefully, and given individual burials or shipped back home to be interred. The bodies of enemy troops might be buried in a mass grave. Potentially, arrangements might be made to return the bodies to the enemy, but that depends on whether an agreement can be made.