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from
Daily Express Saturday 11 November
Outrage at trade in souvenirs from
WWI heroes' graves
BY CYRIL DIXON
THIEVES are desecrating the remains
of British soldiers on the First World War battlefields where more than
50,000 have no known grave.
Treasure hunters posing as
archaeologists are ransacking sites around Flanders for souvenirs they can
sell to the highest bidder. The items are often personal effects which, in
the right hands, would help identify the body and bring comfort to the
fallen man's family. The Royal British Legion last night condemned the
looting as deplorable.
Spokesman Jeremy Lillies said:
"Anything concerned with the disturbing of bodies on battlefields is
unacceptable. If bodies are found they should be reported so they can be
given a proper burial. It is distasteful when these people discover bones,
chuck them to one side and take the personal items. I don't know what
intrinsic value the items can have, but to the families concerned their
value is inestimable."
The grave robbers, mainly French and
Belgians using metal detectors, carry off jewellery, lighters, regimental
badges and buttons to sell to private collectors on the continent. Their
activities are disturbing bones that have lain in the ground for more than
80 years.
The scandal of the looted
battlefields is revealed in a TV documentary to be screened tomorrow.
Battlefield Scavengers explains how the soldiers' bodies were either buried
hastily during combat in shallow graves which were subsequently forgotten or
simply disappeared in the mud.
War veterans are campaigning to end
similar looting on the Normandy coast where 5,000 British soldiers died on
D-Day.
First World War veteran Doug Roberts
told the programme: "It's not even human - it's just greed." The
documentary by LWT shows undercover footage of a collector boasting about
his hoard taken from the remains of soldiers.
It includes a marble crucifix, a
British officer's gold and diamond ring, a wallet and a soldier's wedding
ring. The man also shows off his collection of "dog tags" -
soldiers' identity discs which provide a foolproof way of identifying the
dead.
The programme also criticises a group
of licensed amateur archaeologists who call themselves "the
diggers" and claim to search for bodies so that they can be given a
proper burial. In three years of digging over battlefields at Boezinghe they
have discovered 101 bodies but managed to identify only one.
Their activities have been condemned
by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission which is responsible for
identifying and reburying the bodies.
Spokesman Jeremy Gee said: "It
concerns me greatly that regimental insignia are taken away from a set of
remains.
"If that is passed to us with
the remains, when we come to erect the headstone the soldier's regiment
would be inscribed on it.
"We take pride in trying to put
as much detail on the headstone as possible to try to make it an individual
rather than just a soldier of the Great War."
Families of British soldiers shot for
cowardice in the First World War are to march in the Cenotaph veterans'
parade for the first time.
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