Saturday - February 11, 2012

The End Of The Line

The ‘Pompeii’ of the Western Front: Archaeologists find the bodies of 21 tragic World War One German soldiers in perfectly preserved trenches where they were buried alive by an Allied shell

Engineers find trench network 18ft beneath the surface near town of Carspach while excavating for a new road

The men were part of a larger group of 34 who were buried alive when a huge Allied shell exploded above the tunnel in 1918, causing it to cave in.

Thirteen bodies were recovered from the underground shelter, but the remaining men had to be left under a mountain of mud as it was too dangerous to retrieve them. Nearly a century later, French archaeologists stumbled upon the mass grave on the former Western Front in eastern France during excavation work for a road building project. Many of the skeletal remains were found in the same positions the men had been in at the time of the collapse, prompting experts to liken the scene to Pompeii. A number of the soldiers were discovered sitting upright on a bench, one was lying in his bed and another was in the foetal position having been thrown down a flight of stairs.

As well as the bodies, poignant personal effects such as boots, helmets, weapons, wine bottles, spectacles, wallets, pipes, cigarette cases and pocket books were also found. Even the skeleton of a goat was found, assumed to be a source of fresh milk for the soldiers.

Archaeologists believe the items have been so well-preserved because hardly any air, water or lights had penetrated the trench. The 300ft-long tunnel was located 18ft beneath the surface near the small town of Carspach in the Alsace region of France.

Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t recall anything about WWI in the Alsace-Lorraine region. Almost nothing happened there. Although this is the area where the fighting started, several days before the war actually began, that horrible conflict quickly moved north and stayed there for the entire war. Very little is known about the southern end of the Western Front; Carspach is so far south that it’s off the bottom of most maps of the conflict. The town is about 10 miles south of the French highway A36 which runs between Belfort and Mulhouse, which are generally considered the southern outposts on either side of the Line, even though France held a small city located between them, called Dennemarie, as a military headquarters for most of the war. Carspach is south of there too, and only about 8 miles north of the border town of Pfetterhouse along the Swiss border. From what I can gather, the trenches down there were separated by the Largue River, and both France and Germany kept the sector quiet so that no shells would inadvertently fall into neutral Switzerland. So from August of 1914 until the last great offense and counter-offense in the Spring of 1918, this was the part of the Western Front that truly was All Quiet.

The dead soldiers were part of the 6th Company, 94th Reserve Infantry Regiment.

Their names are all known - they include Musketeer Martin Heidrich, 20, Private Harry Bierkamp, 22, and Lieutenant August Hutten, 37, whose names are inscribed on a memorial in the nearby German war cemetery of Illfurth.

The bodies have been handed over to the German War Graves Commission but unless relatives can be found and they request the remains to be repatriated, it is planned that the men will be buried at Illfurth.

The underground tunnel was big enough to shelter 500 men and had 16 exits. It would have been equipped with heating, telephone connections, electricity, beds and a pipe to pump out water.

The French attacked the shelter on March 18, 1918 with aerial mines that penetrated the ground and blasted in the side wall of the shelter in two points.

It is estimated that over 165,000 Commonwealth soldiers are still unaccounted for on the Western Front.

the real end of the line: French Poilu guard the border crossing at Pfeffenhaus with their Swiss counterparts, 1914
this is an actual color photograph; Lumière invented the autochrome process in 1907

Individual war casualties are still frequently found during construction work on the former Western front battlefields of France and Belgium, but the discovery of so many soldiers in one location is rare.

The tomb, poignant and grisly, sheds light on the lives of the soldiers who died in explosions from heavy shells that penetrated the tunnel.
...
The tunnel, six meters underground and 1.80 meters high, was built with German thoroughness, equipped with heating, telephone connections, electricity, beds and a pipe to pump out water. It had 16 exits and was big enough to hold up to 500 men in an emergency. The archaeologists have uncovered the sides, floors and stairways, all made from heavy timber. The intended permanence of the structure shows how static the fighting was for most of the war, in which both sides built vast trench systems that stretched 440 miles from the Swiss border to the North Sea.

Boots, helmets and weapons, a wine bottle and a mustard jar have been found along with personal items including dog tags, wallets, pipes, cigarette cases, spectacles and pocket books. A rosary was also found, with a French bullet threaded in among the prayer beads, evidently fashioned as a souvenir.

In Britain, the discovery of such a mass grave would be front-page news. Journalists would track down the descendants of the dead soldiers and tell the stories of the Tommies who made the ultimate sacrifice in the horrific conflict that shaped the 20th century.

That was what happened in 2009, when mass graves containing 250 Australian and British soldiers were unearthed near the village of Fromelles, close to the city of Lille. A program was launched to identify the remains through DNA matching, and 110 have been identified by name after over 2,000 relatives responded to calls for DNA samples.

In Germany, it’s a very different story. The find has only made the inside pages of a handful of newspapers. In the nation’s memory, the war is eclipsed by World War II, the Holocaust and the collective guilt that weighs on Germany to this day. Both conflicts have imbued Germany with a deep streak of pacifism.

“Britain, France and Belgium still refer to it as the Great War, but our memory of it is totally buried by World War II with the Holocaust, the expulsion from the east, the Allied bombardment,” Fritz Kirchmeier, spokesman for the German War Graves Commission, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “World War I plays only a minor role in the German national memory.”

The Commission is holding out little hope that it will be able to track down the families of the dead.

“The French attacked the shelter with aerial mines with delayed-action fuses that penetrated the ground and blasted in the side wall of the shelter in two points,” said Ehret.

The French bombardment lasted six hours and the special mines, fired up almost vertical in a high arc, proved too much for the supposedly bomb-proof Killian dugout. The French attack followed a three-hour German artillery barrage with shells containing mustard gas.

Loads more pictures, only one that shows any bones at these links:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2099187/Bodies-21-German-soldiers-buried-alive-WW1-trench-perfectly-preserved-94-years-later.html
http://www.thejournal.ie/preserved-remains-of-21-german-wwi-soldiers-found-in-france-352590-Feb2012/
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/discovered-by-chance-94-years-on-681078
http://battlefieldseurope.co.uk/swissfrontier.aspx
http://landships.activeboard.com/forum.spark?forumID=63528&p=3&topicID=12239539
http://landships.activeboard.com/forum.spark?forumID=63528&p=3&topicID=11841622
http://www.battlefield-tours.com/Western_Front_stagnation.jpg

A bit of trivia: The Alsace-Lorraine Sundgau region has belonged to both France and Germany several times, although it was an on again-off again Austrian principality until 1648. Then the Swedes killed everyone and France took it. The Germans took it as a war prize when they beat France in 1871. Half the towns have French names, half have German names, both keep alternate spellings around just in case, and the locals are probably bi-lingual and just want to be left alone. When WWI erupted, the French immediately took the region back, and held onto most of it for the entire war. Thus, while everyone thinks of WWI as the Germans occupying a good chunk of France, the France were holding a little piece of Germany the whole time. It was a big propaganda victory for France, as this is where Riesling wine comes from. New vineyards for free? Tres oui!! The Nazis took it all back in about 45 minutes a generation later, and gave the locals a pretty rough time. After WWII France took it all back and then some; now the border is along the Rhine River 25 miles or so to the east. And these days Hugel wine (yum!) is made in France, even though their buildings haven’t moved since 1639.

France on the left, Germany on the right, Switzerland on the bottom:
the approximate location of the very southern end of the Western Front in blue
Belfort is in the top left corner, DanneMarie along the top, Mulhouse up above the upper right corner
Pfettenhouse is the circled area in the middle; the Swiss border is in green.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/11/2012 at 03:38 PM   
Filed Under: • Military •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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