WW1 trench burried soldiers

[Gast]

I got this link from a US Forum buddy:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2376475/German-soldiers-perfectly-preserved-trench-buried-alive-Allied-shell.html

[EJER Fuchs]

An amazing discovery - one must but wonder how many more are still down there.

I am glad they finally got an official burial, albeit 95 years after the fact.

My grandfather was in that war as a lineman in a New York artillery regiment. He never quite recovered from being gassed - not that constant smoking helped one iota.

[Gast]

My Grandad was a Sergeant in the 5th Hannover Infantrie Regiment 165 and caught a .303 Brit bullet into his hip at the western front. He never recovered from it and died from an infection of his open wound in 1943.

[karlyman]

Rest in peace, soldiers.

What a craze by - nowadays peaceful - european neighbours to kill and maim themselves in numbers of millions...during four painful years.

My grand-granddad fought for Austria on the eastern front (Galicia) but never talked much about it. Unfortunately I did not ask him more when I was a kid, and when it would have been possible. He is long gone now, as is our "biological link" to WW I soldiers as a whole. Only books and films can tell us now.

For us shooters and collectors, one special part of remembering - and, yes, in a way honoring - these men is preserving their equipment and weapons, and using them in a nowadays peaceful way.

[JuergenG]

Full ack....and I deem it good that some of our collector pieces can't talk.

[Absehen4]

Before we shot each other, but since '45 we shoot together in one direction.

I call that a pretty damn good development.

Abs4

[Olt d.R.]

It is sad that this innocent soldiers ( they really are because of their age! )

are still considered as awful enemys...

Regarding some of the comments of this report makes me feel really sad...

[Gast]

The line of John Donne is written at the right place

The families, who got a letter, didn't even answer, with one exception. Poor

Forgetting the past is epidemic nowadays

[Gast]

I am speculating here but these were young men who died which means they did not leave direct descendants. This is not an excuse but there is a difference between great grandson and great grand nephew.

[Gast]

That might be the reason for not coming, but not for not answering. Did they think that was an advertisement or a beg for a donor?

Anyway, no one can reset. It's done

P.S.: About WW1, the Belgians have the best reasons for remembering, they still sit on a powderbarrel. Any thunderstorm can be the last for the farms there, especially near the german borderline

[karlyman]

Yes. Let's not forget where the WW I western front was...

Other than Belgium and eastern France, German Reich territory itself (with very few exceptions) was not touched by the ground war.