大象传媒

During the War I was in action in Normandy, Belgium, Holland and he borders of Germany with a Highland Division. I eventually, however, found myself at the end of the war posted to a 鈥淕CU鈥� (Graves Concentration Unit) in Dinard in Brittany.

Our job was to make enquiries in each Department of every town , village and hamlet as to whether there were any Allied dead buried either in the local cemetery or in fields round and about. Once this was done, a programmed had to be made of the exact location of each body in order to arrange for exhumations where the identity was unknown. In each case we attempted to try to ascertain a name of number which we might find on a piece of equipment or clothing. An exhumation report was sent to out HQ to be forward to the Imperial War Graves Commission.

All the bodies were returned to their graves if they were buried in a Civil Cemetery or brought in from the countryside. The Imperial War Graves Commission then took over the next part of the operation.

I suppose it could be termed as most unpleasant to open up graves and take the remains apart in order to try and inform the next of kin of the location where their loved ones died. It gave great satisfaction when we were successful. One of our main difficulties was that all the bodies that we were dealing with had no identity tags but we gave a great deal of help by local people such as the priest or mayor of the town or village.

Whilst I appreciate that this cannot be termed as an experience of was in action, it was a very important aspect of the aftermath of the fighting during the conflict. I feel that some mention of recognition should be given to those of us who carried out a very important task.

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