SECRETS OF BATTLEFIELD.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20991, 2 April 1930, Page 16

SECRETS OF BATTLEFIELD.

TRACING DEAD SOLDIERS,

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 France 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 iii 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 chics to its identity are removed and sent on to London headquarters. A few days ago the bodies of eight ! British soldiers were recovered together at Hill 119, near Souchez, the northern extremity of Vimy Ridge. “ Most of the bodies have been recovered from the Ypres salient and from the old Somme battlefield,” said an official of the commission. The detective instinct has been highly developed by this little known department, and many remarkable examples of successful tracing can be cited.

When I called at the office I found one of ‘the staff examining through a magnifying glass the back of a watch that had been found on a body. On it had been inscribed in the tiniest of writing the name of the owner. Part of the scrawl was indecipherable—only the initials and a few letters of the 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 we shall be able to establish his identity. We have tackled more intricate cases than that and have won through. “An interesting case is that where we ascertained the identity of an unknown officer simply from a trouser button which bore the name of a West End firm.

'‘We did not know the name of the regiment in which he had served—the button was all we had to work upon. In itself the button-would have been of little help, though the firm with whom we got in touch offered tp give us a list of their military customers. “As an alternative wo ■ prepared a list of all officers who had been reported missing in that particular area near Beaumant Hamel. From a search of the official- records we found close upon 40 -whose graves were unknowm, and on that list the tailor picked out the name of one of his clients.

“ He'also gave his height, which corresponded with the information in our possession. “In another case we were able to establish the identity of a man solely by his writing.”