Book about clearing WW1 battlefields

[joe90jack]

Having read quite a few books on WW1, I was thinking, after such a massive war, how they went about clearing the battlefields.
Does anyone know of any books that give detail of how they cleared the trenches of all the debris and how the locals tried to get on with life after the war.
Thanks

[4GS]

Why not contact the Commonwealth War Graves Commission direct?

http://www.cwgc.org/contact.asp?menuid=7&catid =0&submenuid=0

[Seafarer1966]

Unexploded munitions are still a problem for farmers in parts of Belgium and France that were sites of WW1 battles. Each year a few unfortunate farmers churn up shells and mines with their ploughs and get injured.

The worst job had to be the grave teams that scoured the battlefields looking for graves of soldiers. These were exhumed and re-interned into war cemeteries. I know about this because I've been doing some family history. My Nan's bro was killed in 1917 but wasn't interred in the Tyne Cott War cemetery until 1919. This perplexed me so I did some more research. The answer was that the hundreds of thousands of hastily buried bodies (probably buried under fire) were dug up and collected together. Nice job after two years in the ground. My Nan's parents didn't get his medals posted to them from the War Office until 1921 as well.

[paddywak]

There is a multinational organisation, mainly volunteers who still work areas of the batllefields, trying to identify the remains which are still, like the munitons are still being found, keep an eye on the history channel as there have been several very interesting ducumentaries on this subject