SECRETS OF BATTLEFIELD

Hawera Star, Volume L, 17 May 1930, Page 11

SECRETS OF BATTLEFIELD

AT the top of a.' big building in Baker '.Street, (London, a handful of clerks, from the most slender of clues, are daily probing secrets, that come straight from the battlefields of. Franco and Flanders, writes a. correspondent in the “Sunday News” (London). Those clerks are on. the staff of the Imperial .War Graves [Commission, part of whose duties it is to establish the identity of bodies recovered! by the metal searchers, by the agricultural workers, or by those engaged in reconstruction. work in the regions devastated during the war.

For each body found' a small reward is given, and before the body of an unknown warrior has been reinterred all clues to its identity are removed and sent on to the London headquarters. * . , A few days ago the bodies of eight British soldiers were recovered together at Hill l'lfi, near Soucliez, the northern extremity of Vimy Bulge. “Most, of the bodies have been recovered from tho Y.pres .salient and from the old iSonvmo battlefield,” said an official of the Commission. The detective instinct has been highly developed by this little known department and manj- .remarkable examples of successful tracing can bo cited. When I called'at tho office I found one of tho staff examining through a | magnifying glass tho back of a watch I that had l boon found, on a body. On it

Tracing Dead Soldiers

had been inscribed in the tiniest of writing the name of tho owner. Part of the scrawl was indecipherable —only the initials and a few letters of tiie surname could, be read with

difficulty. “The soldier had apparently scratched his name on it with a pin,” explained a member of the staff, “but I think wo shall be able to establish his identity. Wo have, tackled more intricate cases than that and! have won. through. '“An interesting case is that where we ascertained the identity af am unknown officer simply from, a trousei button which bore the name of a West /End firm. , “ We did not even know the name oi the regiment in which he had served—the button wate all we liadi to work upon. In itself the button would have •been of little help, though the firm ■with whom we got in touch offered to ■give us a list of their military customers. Ac, an alternative w.o prepared a list of all officers who had been reported missing in that particular aie.t ■near Beaumont Hamel. From a search of the official records we found close ■upc.ii 40 whose graves were unknown, •and on that list the tailor picked -out ■the name of one of his clients. “He also gave his height, which eor•respondedi with the information in out •possession. “In another ease we were able, to establish the identity of a man solely •by his writing.”