REPATRIATION

In light of the Argentinian Government recently digging up their UNKNOWN SOLDIER's in the Falkland Islands and carrying out DNA on each soldiers remains so they can be reunited with their loved ones, it is highly commendable and probably time the UK thought about that for the hundreds of lads that are buried in far flung countries who today descecrate the graves and clearly don't want anything Christian near them>

Watch this video from 1919 and see how the U.S Government tackled the problem, well done guys very moving............it needs no sound!!

Activities of Graves Registration Service, France, 1919-1920 - YouTube :crying:

"...time the UK thought about that..." That'd be astronomically expensive. Especially considering the numbers of troopies involved. And the number of countries that may or may not cooperate.

I understand about repatriating the fallen from WWI for bringing them home but on the other hand probably from an Aussie thing I would surmise if they had the choice that they would wish rather to be with their mates as they shared everything on the great adventure even death and to separate them now after so long seems rather sad as they may not have any relatives left alive in this country.
The lost diggers of Fromelles who were discovered a few years ago were all interred in a new grave yard and monument constructed specifically for them which I think is a fitting gesture I would leave them in peace.........

repatriation is a moot point isn't it. I remember having a long discussion (and more than a few beers) on the subject with a US Navy team in Hanoi back in the 90's. They were getting ready to head out with their Vietnamese counterparts to look for the remains of an MIA F105 pilot who went down in a very inaccessible area.

Huge resources and enormous effort were being put into this ... quite rightly so!

That said, I also take Ron's point that the WW1 fallen should be re-interned in the very smart and beautifully kept Commonwealth Cemeteries. The Allied WW1/2 enormous cemeteries in France are both extremely moving and very humbling, they should make every new Prime Minister and President tour them to fully understand the real cost of war.

Don't disagree with the lads staying with their mates where they fell, but what I do disagree with is lads staying where they are not welcome such as Maala Cemetery in Aden where the graves are continually being descecrated, and Benghazi where they have totally destroyed the cross of sacrifice and grave stones with sledge hammers.
Bring them home, its not a big job at all, they don't deserve that dishonour from the countries they liberated to allow these b****** to get away with it.

Twelve Islamic militants used sledgehammers and crowbars to smash graves of British war heroes in a mindless rampage in Aden, Yemen

British war graves in Libya desecrated by Islamist militants | World news | The Guardian

I concur with you Gil perhaps 75 years ago we should have let the Germans sort them.

I stood on the monument of BB-39 at Pearl in 1989 and can attest it is a very eerie, solemn and moving experience walking over her hulk to be faced with that marble wall so full of those poor souls who never had a chance a most horrid way to go.
My friend and I were on a self guide that day and apart from a few US citizens the rest were from lets just say not European decent which I found at that time rather bizarre that they would scurry around taking happy snaps of each other and I just wondered if they really knew or even cared about the significance of that memorial they were walking on.
I spent a fair while looking at the wall and then looking into the water at her dim shape and said a quite prayer I am not overly religious but I felt it was the right thing to do......
(Was turned off it by the exceedingly harsh way the Nuns treated us boarders)

Yes it is odd but commendable I suppose, why those whose nation was our enemy once, wants to come and gloat in the middle of their holiday at a ship their forefathers sunk!! Conversely, its good to talk to those who opposed you once for their perspective so we can all learn from it.............two hopes, Bob Hope and no hope!

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Originally Posted by Gil Boyd

Yes it is odd but commendable I suppose, why those whose nation was our enemy once, wants to come and gloat in the middle of their holiday at a ship their forefathers sunk!! Conversely, its good to talk to those who opposed you once for their perspective so we can all learn from it.............two hopes, Bob Hope and no hope!

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Sinking that ship turned out to be VERY expensive for them, didn't it? :beerchug:

Cinders- I had the exact same feelings, except that I wanted to throw a few of them overboard! I was alive when that happened, didn’t really understand it then but learned more as the war progressed and I grew older.Being a child at that time probably accounts for my current interest in all things WW2.

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Originally Posted by CINDERS

I concur with you Gil perhaps 75 years ago we should have let the Germans sort them.

I stood on the monument of BB-39 at Pearl in 1989 and can attest it is a very eerie, solemn and moving experience walking over her hulk to be faced with that marble wall so full of those poor souls who never had a chance a most horrid way to go.
My friend and I were on a self guide that day and apart from a few US citizens the rest were from lets just say not European decent which I found at that time rather bizarre that they would scurry around taking happy snaps of each other and I just wondered if they really knew or even cared about the significance of that memorial they were walking on.
I spent a fair while looking at the wall and then looking into the water at her dim shape and said a quite prayer I am not overly religious but I felt it was the right thing to do......
(Was turned off it by the exceedingly harsh way the Nuns treated us boarders)

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Originally Posted by bob4wd

Cinders- I had the exact same feelings, except that I wanted to throw a few of them overboard! I was alive when that happened, didn’t really understand it then but learned more as the war progressed and I grew older.Being a child at that time probably accounts for my current interest in all things WW2.

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I was on the other side of that coin when I visited the atomic bomb museum in Nagasaki, japan.....

Though I may surmise Merle you would have conducted yourself with restraint and dignity for what that monument signified, one could say it was a most horrid weapon to release on human beings it was suggested a naval blockade similar to what Germany faced in WWI may hold the key but that would be a protracted affair and most probably more inhuman that dropping that thing twice.
I know there are victims still dying from the affects of the radiation released on those occasions and looking back I think that Truman made the right choice as in the long run and the bigger picture it saved horrendous casualties from both sides one figure quoted in a doco I have recently watched about this affair of the bomb put US casualties at 2.5 million from attacking and fighting on mainland Japan.
In this doco it explains that Truman was informed discretely in a meeting he was in with Stalin about the project Trinity detonation the fact is Uncle Joe knew about it anyway so it really was not a secret the thing was the US did not have the capability to drop a 3rd one as they had no sufficient amount of U235 or Plutonium to manufacture another weapon for another 9 months.
Anyway a bit off track but for me personally any war grave site I visit mainly friends and not to many foes is shown respect as they were all soldiers once.........

My daughter and her husband taught English in Japan for 5 years at an American owned school and we travelled to see her on three occasions.

It is probably the strangest environment or country I have ever been too.
Very formal, highly efficient but totally unorthodox. Ruled by officialdom and everybody appears to tow the line, for their own reasons!!
However,
Whilst we were there a number of years ago, an English girl teaching English to a Millionaires son was murdered and found in a bath filled with sand on a balcony, another girl was murdered by another millionaire and found on a beach. She was a hostess, and a guy walked into a Police station and stabbed all the officers, so you have to balance what goes on and where!!!

It is such a strange country and one has to go there to experience the legacy. One has to think the A Bombs have made them totally subservient in many many ways, and scared to upset anybody, but these odd things then occur which you can't even start to explain.

I know you can't blame their fore fathers for everything, but I find the massacre of 200 bed ridden British soldiers and nurses and doctors in Alexandria Hospital in Singapore in 1941 totally unacceptable and a total flout of the Geneva Convention, and their bodies tipped into a mass grave still there today under the football pitch. That afterall was what they were good at, slaughter.
I have never knowingly bought anything Japanese and can fully understand those men that were in their camps feeling the same and very bitter even today, especially those that worked on the Burma Railroad!!

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Originally Posted by Gil Boyd

these odd things then occur which you can't even start to explain.

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Including the fist fights in their political forum...on TV...

..............ha ha yes and that very unusual for what appear a docile race nowadays

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Originally Posted by Merle

I was on the other side of that coin when I visited the atomic bomb museum in Nagasaki, japan.....

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I visited Hiroshima in the mid fifties, and surprisingly enough encountered no animosity at all, or at least none that I was aware of.
I think that the bad feelings that the world expresses about nuclear bombs today is a fairly recent development- at the time most people in Japan that I encountered seemed to feel that they were just another way to bomb them, especially when compared to the Tokyo fire bombings.

Sadly, it was the only way to stop such a powerful force from proceeding around the globe unchecked with support from Germany!
Did the President make the right decision.................I personally think he did. He had to be a bigger man, and what a burden to have on your shoulders for the rest of his life!!!

Bit like the father of the bomb Oppenheimer whom I think stated or said words to the effect after the Trinity detonation "I have become the destroyer of Worlds."

History is a remarkable thing...........just imagine for one minute either Germany or Japan having it first. Germany was very capable towards the latter days, and they were searchuing for a quick deadly solution as they realised their days were numbered.
Feel quite lucky in that respect!!

I had already made it known to my parents that I didn't want to be buried anywhere in the Far East but Australia would be acceptable. In Malaya/Singapore/Hong Kong we were buried there but SVn it was back to Oz but I was a pom, as were plenty of the others. The irony was that if your parents or NoK wanted you anywhere else than 'NATO standard' (or SEATO standard there!!), they had to pay. To be really honest, when you're just 20, it's not a thing that you actually worried about. What do the others say?

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Originally Posted by Peter Laidler

when you're just 20, it's not a thing that you actually worried about. What do the others say?

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No, didn't enter conversation. Don't know for sure but I think after Korea we repaitreated all. KIA in UN duty wouldn't likely see me buried up by the Grammar School in Nicosia...probably repat...

No, we didn't think about it.

I think my parents had thought about it as we travelled the world......selecting the right resting place was on the agenda as the world, then as it is now, was in utter turmoil!