Britian reburings WWI dead

[E Williams]

Britain reburies soldiers lost in World War I

Britain reburies soldiers lost in World War I: Mist gathers on the horizon at Dud's Corner World War I Cemetery in Loos-en-Gohelle, France, on Thursday, March 13, 2014. Private William McAleer, of the 7th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers, was killed in action on Sept. 26, 1915, during the Battle of Loos and his name has been on the wall of the missing at Dud's Corner for nearly 100 years. His body was found and identified in 2010, during routine construction in the area, and he was reburied with full military honors at the Loos British Cemetery on Friday, March 14, 2014 AP Photo: Virginia Mayo

Mist gathers on the horizon at Dud's Corner World War I Cemetery in Loos-en-Gohelle, France, on Thursday, March 13, 2014. Private William McAleer, of the 7th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers, was killed in action on Sept. 26, 1915, during the Battle of Loos and his name has been on the wall of the missing at Dud's Corner for nearly 100 years. His body was found and identified in 2010, during routine construction in the area, and he was reburied with full military honors at the Loos British Cemetery on Friday, March 14, 2014 AP 4 hr ago | By GREG KELLER of Associated Press

LOOS-EN-GOHELLE, France (AP) Scotsman William McAleer had been in France barely two months when, just before sunrise on Sept. 25, 1915, he was among thousands of other troops who launched the British army's largest attack so far of World War I.

By the next day, the 22-year-old private from a seaside town in Fife was dead. Almost 60,000 British troops died in the Battle of Loos, and a third disappeared with no known grave.

McAleer was one of them, until nearly a century later, when workers building a new prison turned up his remains in a common grave.

On Friday, McAleer and 19 other still unidentified British soldiers were reburied with full military honors in a ceremony in this sleepy northern French village, close to where they fell in battle. The ceremony was a reminder of the horrors of a war that devastated this continent 100 years ago and as a reminder of why many Europeans today are so wary of seeing a new conflict on their eastern flank in Ukraine.

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A bagpiper played "Amazing Grace" as McAleer's coffin was carried through the fog-shrouded cemetery Friday morning by six Royal Regiment of Scotland soldiers wearing kilts. A distant relative of McAleer's, Stephen McLeod, represented McAleer's family at the funeral.

"He was my great uncle. My gran gave me his Mass card when I joined the army," said McLeod, 47, of Cowdenbeath, Fife.

"In the centenary year (of the start of the war), to be able to remember those who've fallen, and for it be your kith and kin, how can you find the words?" McLeod said after the ceremony.

Around 200 people, some from as far away as Australia, turned out for the hour-long ceremony. Many were history buffs who'd heard about the ceremony on the website of the Western Front Association, a historical society.

More here:

http://news.msn.com/in-depth/britain-reburies-soldiers-lost-in-world-war-i

[Mervyn Mitton]

Britain's War Graves Commission is a wonderful body who supervise British War Cemetries around the World.

Their work will probably never finish - so many bodies still to be found.

Interesting to hear about these latest re-internments. Mervyn