"MISSING" SOLDIERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17217, 21 January 1918, Page 8

"MISSING" SOLDIERS

WHAT ARK THEIR CHANCES? When is a soldier first regarded as missing? When he is reported as missing, what steps are taken by the authorities to ascertain his fate? What are the prospects of a missing man proving alive, even after the official presumption of his death ? How soon after his being reported missing do tho authorities presume his death? This scries of questions was recently addressed to us by a correspondent, and as thj> answers to them may bo of interest to many people, -we have decided to incorporate them in this article. To begin with, a soldie.r is usually first regarded as missing when he fails to answer the roll call which takes place after a battle is over, and exhaustive inquiries by his commanding officer have not elicited anything definite as to his having been killed in the battle.

When the commanding officers report that the soldier is missing reaches the War Office, a special department which exists for the purpose immediately begins to make inquiries in all directions in order to trace him. The British Red Cross Society is also informed, and they, too, begin a systematic search. They communicat2 with every one of their own hospitals and also with those of the French Bed Cross. They likewise make patient inquiries among the soldiers at the different bases. All this is absolutely necessary, because it is impossible to say where a " missing " man may have drifted to. In the battle, in which he went missing he may have become separated a long way from his own party, then been wounded and taken to a French hospital, or a British hospital belonging to some other sector of the line than his own, and from thence transferred to a base other than his own. If none of these inquiries bring forth any authentic news of him, the presumption is that, unless killed and his body or grave not traced, he has, either wounded or unwounded, fallen into the enemy's hands. — Information from Germany.— In such case Germany is tried for information. Lists of British missing are prepared by the War Office for the Foreign Office, and the latter transmits them to Germany through the Government of Holland.

" As respects officers and men reported " missing" from other fronts than the western, a similar course is followed as far as possible.

When the lists of British" missing reach Germany and other enemgr countries they are circulated among the various prisoner-of-war camps and hospitals, and in this way it is gratifying to record the fate of many missing men is ascertained. However, it should bo clearly understood that the absence of any news from Germany or any other enemy country of any missing man who is presumed to be a prisoner of war in that country does not mean that the man is not there. Various causes often operate to prevent news of the man b.eing furnished. The callousness of officials is one of the main causes; their sheer cussedness is another! They neglect to give, or deliberately withhold, information which they could supply, and not infrequently cruelly prevent the prisoners in their charge from writing home. This sort of thing is not so rife in Germany as in other enemy countries; but was rifo enough in Germany, though, when the number of their men held prisoners by us was so much smaller than the number they held of ours. Since the boot has been on the other leg the German authorities have considerably improved their treatment of our men who are unfortunately in their grip, and in order that they may in turn obtain news of their own missing do nob now, as a general rule, fail to supply any news they can of ours. — Official Presumption of Death.— As regards the presumption of a missing soldier's death, the practice of the War Office is, in the case of officers, to presume death after the expiration of- a period of six months from the date of the " missing" report, and, in the case of men, seven months. Eight or wrong, the War Office then declares the soldier dead.

The War Office praGiice is—if I may make such a reference on such a theme— akin to the attitude of the Lord High Executioner in "The Mikado." "If we say you're dead, you're as good as dead— vou practically are dead."

However, in spite of all the War Office declarations, many other "dead" men have a knack of resurrecting themselves. Already in the course of the war a good number of them have returned to life, in most instances, to the great joy of their loved ones, but certainly in a few instance? to the extreme embarrassment of many people. More than one case has occurred of a resurrected man returning home to find his wife the wife, of another man, the good woman having contracted the second marriage under the confident belief that she was a widow. — Wait for the End of the War.— , Certainly until the war is over, and channels of information opened up which are now practically closed, it is not really safe to nresuamc a missing man's death merely because no news of his being alive has Been received since he went a-miss-iiifT —and more especially if he went amissing on one of the eastern battlefronts. Even what may seem to be the most reliable information as to a man's death may be inaccurate. A particularly striking instance of this was afforded not so very long ago in the case of an artiilervman of West Bromwich. The major of the batterv in which he was serving wrote to his relatives: —"I had him buried, with others of his comrades who were lulled in action at the same time, and above them we placed a wooden cross." Almost at the same moment the man, who was perfectly safe in British hands, was himself writing to his relatives: "I am quite well; I am being sent down to the base." Another instance occurred in the case of a yonng machine-gun officer who was notified as missing by the War Office. The father, in response to inquiries he made of his son's brother officers, was told they had seen a party of Germans surround his son while working his gun, and that in all probability he was killed. And one man confirmed the probability by stating very definitely that he had actually seen the young officer lying on the ground quite dead. On such strong evidence of death the family went into mourning. But a few months later they were joyously surprised to receive an intimation from the War Office that the son was, after all, a prisoner in Germany. —No Absolute Certainty.— The fact is that the harsh exigencies of battle make it a matter of absolute impossibility to ascertain either quickly or beyond doubt what the fate of missing men really is—a state of affairs which inflicts on the unfortunate relatives one of the most dreadful penalties of war, placing them helplessly on the rack of a terrible uncertainty, there to be cruelly tormented by constantly alternating hopes for the best and fears for the worst of their loved ones. Would that it -were not so!