Hill 80 Revisited

It has been almost two years since I helped excavate the World War One battlefield site of Hill 80 in rural Belgium.  I gave a talk on it in November 2018, timed to be as close as the schedule would allow to the exact moment that the guns fell silent in 1918.  

Recently I offered to reprise several of my talks for the local community education program as a three part Archaeology Series.  Yesterday I revisited Hill 80.

Good turnout, its always gratifying when the limiting factor is size of the room.

This was a noon hour session so we did have to mix a light lunch with a heavy topic.

I was able to use new material this time, including a variety of great photos of items conserved post excavation.

And this time around I could report publically the name of a soldier - one of 120 lost soldiers recoved during the dig - who had been definitively identified by name.

Rest in Peace Albert Oehrle.  A Bavarian whose pre-war occupation was listed as "Gardener".  He enlisted in the initial wave of enthusiasm in 1914.  His military career was short.  His regiment was thrown into the desparate First Battle of Ypres.  Most of these new recruits were only partly trained.  Many were very young.  In Germany this is remembered as the Kindermort.  Literally this means "the death of the children" but it is also a reference to the New Testament "massacre of the innocents" carried out by Herod after the visit of the Magi to Bethlahem.

Albert Oehrle was 17 years old.