A small corner of Flanders Fields

Flanders, that flat and much fought over portion of Belgium, is dotted with immaculate cemeteries like this one near Wytschaete.

The horrific losses of the Great War had a major impact on how the warring nations viewed their casualties.  In England particularly, the terrible harrowing of an entire generation of the Empire's best was sobering.  Even before the war had ended there were plans being made that turned into the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.  One of the minds behind it was Rudyard Kipling, that most emphatic of Imperialists, whose only son, an 18 year lieutenant, lay dead in a lost and unmarked grave.

The cemeteries can be large or small.  Most are in rural locations as it was decided that the men should rest near where they fell.  In a radical move it was also decided that in death there would be no class distinctions. Officers and men all have the same grave stones.  Men from Britain and from all over the Empire rest together.  They are well maintained and humbling.

With that somber background I was rather unprepared to find this grave marker in this little cemetery near the Hill 80 dig.

The grave of a German corporal, one of 14 German graves among the total of 105.  One of the Germans was actually a sailor! 

So what gives?

German casualties were collected after the war and primarily buried in three large cemeteries dedicated specifically to that purpose.  But 1,105 Germans remain buried in 79 Allied cemeteries scattered across Belgium.  In many cases these casualties were men who died of their wounds while prisoners.  But In this cemetery, Torreken Farm Number One, all the German casualties died between April 10th and May 1st of 1918.  The German spring offensive started on April 9th and it seems that this existing Allied cemetery was in the captured territory and was simply used for new German casualties.

And how did a sailor end up as a casualty? 

That's a little harder to say.  There were sailors assigned to the German armies, they for instance operated the really big guns that were repurposed from naval projects once it became clear that long range ship construction was not a realistic option.  There were also "Marine Divisions" of German sailors assigned to holding the coastal portions of Belgium.  That seems fair, down near the sea Belgium was probably as much water as dirt, since the dike systems were destroyed in 1914 to slow the German advance.   

The grave marker for the sailor, Gottlieb Arndt, has the designation "Marine Howitzer Battery One" so I am assuming that he was a gunner assigned to land duty when victory at sea was no longer considered possible.

Bad feelings towards Germany were common after the World Wars, and may not entirely forgotten to this day.  So it is good to see that at least here and there a bit of common decency prevails. It would have been easy enough to disturb the rest of these German dead.  But it is not as if any of these young men had a part in the chain of bad decisions that made Flanders the site of four years of inhumane slaughter.