The 1914–1918 war was called great, as no of the erstwhile conflicts have made specified a mark on Europe and many countries of the world. On her fronts, soldiers died thousands in 1 attack only – massacred by the fire of cecaems, artillery or combat gases. Paradoxically this hecatomba besides changed the approach to soldier burials – which culminated in the foundation of the Tombs of the Unknown Soldier.
The word "paradoxically" fell above randomly, due to the fact that just specified a large number of the fallen forced changes in the approach to soldier burials, which in erstwhile conflicts – specified as Napoleonic wars or later Franco-Prussian wars of the 1870s – frequently remained anonymous. They could number on the commanders or officers of the higher charge, and not always. The bodies of the officers or privates, most frequently stripped of their uniforms, as they were inactive useful, were buried in mass graves, setting a cross or stone mound on them. It took large leaders, like Napoleon Bonaparte, to make a precedent in this matter. Namely, the emperor instructed that only the names of his generals should be engraved on the Arc de Triomphe, built to commemorate the triumph of Austerlitz. At the same time, he ordered that plaques be placed on the walls of St. Magdalene's church with the names of all the fallen in this conflict regardless of the degrees.
The first country to change its approach to military burials in the 19th century was the United States. After an highly bloody civilian war called the Art Nouveau, alleged civilian War, the alleged national cemeteries began to be delineated in North America (in full 73 of them were created in 1864–1870). On May 15, 1864, the date of the designation of the National Arlington Cemetery, can be considered as the first military cemetery. It is not only in this respect that the Americans were ahead of Europeans. It was during the civilian War that the first dog tags appeared. Both fighting parties tried to limit the anonymity of fallen soldiers to a maximum, placing names and recognition numbers from these dog tags on graves. In connection with the delineation of these military cemeteries, the world's first mass exhumations were carried out. Let their scale be demonstrated by the fact that from over 600,000 fallen soldiers of the civilian War, nearly half were exhumed and transferred to national cemeteries.
Battlefield necropolis
In this respect, Europe was lagging behind the United States. The first military cemetery was founded by Germany during the war with France in 1871, burying 1 of the clashes in the close field of its fallen and enemy. This was unprecedented and did not affect imitation. The fallen soldiers continued to be commemorated “collectively” with various monuments and posts in civilian cemeteries, churches or on the streets of cities – especially in France.
Only mentioned mass death during World War I forced changes on the countries involved. First of all, it was related to the fact that the death of a soldier on the battlefield afraid very broad social circles. The problem was exacerbated by the mass collection or enlistment and immense losses in the war, which took on positional features. For weeks, the troops were in trenches in an area changed by fire into a “moon”. And another bloody attack from 1 side or the another couldn't break that deadlock. These dramatic circumstances caused that there was almost no home where individual would not be killed on the front. It was 1 of the main themes in the background of this war – besides fueled by war propaganda and utilized to rise patriotic attitudes and mobilise people to subsequent victims for the country.
The second, crucial and very problematic aspect as the fighting continued was the issues—prosaically speaking—technically related to thousands of bodies of fallen soldiers. This problem is very meaningfully shown by the movie “In the West No Change” (2022). In order to identify, transport, exhumation, and delineation of military necropolis in fighting armies, peculiar units intended only for these tasks began to be created. The increasing war effort besides forced civilian authorities – governments of individual states – to presume work for the burial of their citizens who died on the front. According to the researcher, Dr. Jan Schubert: “It was besides essential that the body of the fallen soldier was legally owned by an army, which did not change his death. It is besides worth noting that local communities did not have the means and capabilities to tackle this issue as a whole. Monarchies: Austro-Hungarian, German, British, Belgian and Italian, and the French Republic, taking on the function of the family, were to take care of the grave of the fallen, and replacing local communities, were to build and decorate cemeteries and supply eternal care for them."
Unknown Soldier
Very often, however, despite political declarations or attempts at exhumation, it was not possible to identify all those massacred by the artillery storm or the fire of the cecaems who died or at least to find their remains. To commemorate their sacrifice as a motherland of blood, and to preserve “for an everlasting time” in memory of subsequent generations, began first in Europe and then in the planet to rise the graves of an unknown soldier. The demands for building specified monuments appeared in France as early as the 19th century, but only planet War I became a catalyst for their realization.
And it was the French authorities who first decided to build specified a memorial grave. First on November 10, 1920, coffins were exhibited in Verdun with the remains of 8 unknown soldiers, and the monument's plan was yet realized on January 28, 1921. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was located under the Arc de Triomphe at the Star Square (today Charles de Gaulle Square) in Paris. akin symbolic memorial graves were created in London (11 November 1920 in Westminster), Rome (4 November 1921) and in Warsaw (2 November 1925 in arcades) Saxon palace). besides in the United States, the Nameless were commemorated, building the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the mentioned Arlington National Cemetery close Washington (November 11, 1921). It differs from the European counterparts, that it contains the ashes of soldiers not only of the large war, but besides of subsequent conflicts in which the American army fought - World War IIThe Korean and Vietnamese War.
René Masson in the fresh "Unknown Soldier" portrays hypothetically the war fates of these 8 nameless heroes from Verdun, whose remains rested in the Grave of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. So he described the minute erstwhile their coffins were displayed in public on November 10, 1920, in 1 of Verdun’s forts: “And everyone, almost all of them, came to the pulpit. any went there immediately after work, others first came home to wash their hands or change their clothes, but sooner or later they came. They were pushing to see him. Their many presence caused resonance of stone plates and coffin boards. Oh, it was not the responsibility of these men; they acted discreetly; they did not talk a word; men, young and old, had their heads exposed, and even those women who were not in black, those revived, coqueteer, in hats—silent and serious.
Some stopped in front of him, researched the eyebrows as if they wanted to penetrate the three-colored flag with their eyes, and then they went to the next coffin, stopped and just as researched the eyebrows...’.
Sources of quotes:
René Masson, Unknown Soldier, crowd. Tadeusz Evert, Warsaw 1969
Jan Schubert, Soldier's Burials in the Historical Tradition since planet War I. Construction of military cemeteries, “Technical diary of the Cracow University of Technology”, 2011, z. 16, pp. 173–200
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