New Diary Entry - Nearly Buried Alive on the Battlefied

"One section was busy with digging a common grave for the dead. We took away the papers and valuables of the dead, took possession of the eatable and drinkable stores to be found in the saddle bags attached to the horses and, when the grave was ready, we began to place the dead bodies in it. They were laid close together in order to utilize fully the available space. I, too, had been ordered to "bring in" the dead. The bottom of the grave was large enough for twenty-three bodies if the space was well utilized. When two layers of twenty-three had already been buried a sergeant of the artillery, who was standing near, observed that one of the "dead" was still alive. He had seen the "corpse" move the fingers of his right hand. On closer examination it turned out that we came near burying a living man, for after an attempt lasting two hours we succeeded in restoring him to consciousness. The officer of the infantry who supervised the work now turned to the two soldiers charged with getting the corpses ready and asked them whether they were sure that all the men buried were really dead. "Yes," the two replied, "we suppose they are all dead." That seemed to be quite sufficient for that humane officer, for he ordered the interments to proceed. Nobody doubted that there were several more among the 138 men whom we alone buried in one grave (two other, still bigger, graves had been dug by different burial parties) from whose bodies life had not entirely flown. To be buried alive is just one of those horrors of the battlefield which your bar-room patriot at home (or in America) does not even dream of in his philosophy."

This diary describes the wartime experiences of a German soldier during WWI. He describes the scene of a mass burial of soliders that were buried in rows of 23 and stacked 2 people high. This seems pretty normal for WWI because of how often people were getting mowed down my machine guns or blown to pieces by mortars. However, at this particular burial site, one man noticed that one of the men being buried still had life in his limbs. He saw that man move his fingers. The grave diggers had buried a man alive next to almost 50 other bloody bodies without even taking a second look to make sure he was dead. The supervisor of this burial asked the people who were doing the actual burying if they made sure everyone was dead before they buried them. A simple "yes" was enough to convince the supervisor that no living soldiers were being buried. They knew that there were almost definitely live soldiers being buried still, but they simply kept going.

This entry kind of disturbs me because of how little the supervisor of the grave seems to care about burying people alive. He didn't even go over to check on more of the bodies while they were being buried and when he found out a solider had been buried alive, all that he needed to continue burying all of the bodies his eye could see was a simple "yes" that made sure that all of the buried bodies were dead. This passage also shows just how much violence was going on in WWI. There were so many motionless, bloody, disfigured bodies laying around that some people couldn't even tell if they were dead or not. The grave diggers were just burying everything that was on the ground without paying much attention to what they were actually burying so they wouldn't fall behind with their work. No soldier should need to add to his list of fears the fear of being buried alive by a man from his own side of the fight.





http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php"/VIII_NEARLY_BURIED_ALIVE_ON_THE_BATTLEFIELD

A German Deserter's War Experience: VIII

NEARLY BURIED ALIVE ON THE BATTLEFIELD