we've had a lot of coverage here, Art, over the past few years & I've been following it with interest.

The coverage started me looking for info about my Nan's brother James Royal Lambert who died in another battle in 1917 & whose body was never found.

He's one of the thousands with no known grave listed on the Menin Gate memorial (scroll down to painting & photo)   It doesn't worry me that his body was never recovered & he's laying with/near his mates where they fell, but it did worry his mother, and families still worry about family members, known to them or just names on family trees, who have no known grave in recent & long past wars.

Fallen Fromelles soldiers laid to rest

Digger's diary recounts 'hell on earth'

sandra


A recent article in 'History Today'- Return of the Fallen -page 3, Sept 09 says that until the late 19th Century "... Historically our war dead remained, to paraphrase Rupert Brooke, in 'some corner of a foreign field' ... Most remained where they fell, in unmarked mass graves ..." and it was only in the First World War that ordinary soldiers were buried in cemeteries, maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and other organisations.