Tim Grady uncovers the overlooked story of those who cared for the dead in two world wars
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Author Tim Grady | Price £22.50 on Amazon | Released Out now
Reviewer: Nick Soldinger
In this frequently moving book, Tim Grady tells the story of a largely forgotten group of men: the British and German casualties who were buried on enemy soil during the two world wars.
Initially, these combatants, usually prisoners of war and downed airmen, were buried in cemeteries close to where they died. As such, many were laid to rest in community cemeteries where their funerals were organised by parish authorities and their graves cared for by local people.
In the immediate aftermaths of both wars, these cemeteries became, to borrow Grady’s phrase, zones of contact where Anglo-German relations could begin to be rebuilt. Places where, for the most part, grieving wives and mothers could come to lay flowers at the graves of their men. In other words, places where sympathy between former foes could flourish and reconciliation could grow.
After both conflicts, however, Britain and Germany’s respective war graves commissions decided to ‘concentrate’ the remains of their fallen. In each country, large national cemeteries were built and thousands of bodies were disinterred and moved, sometimes hundreds of miles from their original graves, to be buried in them.
This bureaucratic process shifted the lens of bereavement from the personal to the national. Removing their remains from these local communities erased a shared sense of loss and planted a narrative of patriotic sacrifice in its place. Today, remembrance is enshrined within an ideology of national heritage, where its emotional power is plundered by political and commercial forces alike. A thought-provoking read.
– Nick Soldinger
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