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"Missing" in action

  • 13-11-2014 11:58am
    #1
    vicwatson
    Registered Users Posts: 28,403 ✭✭✭✭


    Hi,

    Looking up about a relative in the 1st WW, I see that according to his medal chart he was KIA yet when I looked up the daily war record I see he is marked as Missing.

    Others are marked as "killed", "wounded", "died of wounds" and "gassed"

    Does "Missing" mean he was never found and assumed "killed in Action" and if not how is it contradictory to his medal chart?


Comments

  • #2
    Snickers Man
    Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭Snickers Man


    As a general rule of thumb only about 30-40% of the fatalities in the British Army in the First World War have individually marked graves. The rest are all commemorated on plaques, walls, gates, obelisks etc. this is because it was impossible to identify all of the bodies mutilated by shell fire or gas or even to find them once they had been lying in the mud or sand for any length of time.

    Therefore the majority of British Soldiers killed during the war would have been officially listed as "missing", at least at first.

    My understanding is that after a period of time a military court of enquiry would discuss each case and decide whether it was safe, on the balance of probabilty, to pronounce a soldier as officially dead. Very often they were open and shut cases. "I saw Fred go over the top with me. Some bombs exploded nearby. I never saw him again"

    I think the process got to be very automatic after a while. Perhaps some of those here with more immediate knowledge of military procedures could enlighten you further.


  • #3
    vicwatson
    Registered Users Posts: 28,403 ✭✭✭✭vicwatson


    Thank you.

    I see by the war report that he was infact reclassified as KIA having previously been classified as MIA.

    Would this mean that they found a body at some point? (though I know he doesn't have a grave only a memorial plaque)


  • #4
    Snickers Man
    Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭Snickers Man


    Not necessarily.

    As I said, I believe inquiry panels adjudicated on the cases of missing soldiers after a while and pronounced them officially dead if the evidence suggested it was likely. A bit like what happened to Lord Lucan, although this was not a military case. After a certain period of time with no sight or sound of him, he was declared officially dead, although no body was ever found.

    Have a look at some of the cemetery descriptions on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website. The total number of men commemorated in each graveyard usually includes a load of "unknown soldier" graves as well as a plaque of soldiers "known or believed to be buried here."

    So, at the risk of being crude, they might have found a jumble of bones comprising several bodies that they couldn't identify and concluded that your ancestor might have been one of them. But individual identification was frequently impossible at the time.


  • #5
    Snickers Man
    Registered Users Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭Snickers Man


    Just to add, here is part of the description from the CWGC website of the V Beach cemetery at Gallipoli where many of the soldiers of the Dublin and Munster Fusiliers who were slaughtered in such numbers on the first day are buried or commemorated.


    There are now 696 servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 480 of the burials are unidentified but special memorials commemorate 196 officers and men, nearly all belonging to the units which landed on 25 April, known or believed to be buried among them.

    Note the huge discrepancy between individually identified and unknown or "probable" graves. Only 31% of graves individually identified. It's a very typical ratio.


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