Simple answer: graves. The Ukranians have been able to bury some of their dead in churchyards, but the need to remove dead bodies from the area where there are still live people trying to survive is paramount. Mass graves in apartment courtyards is common. And the US is constantly reporting evidence of mass burial by the Russians.
I know some people are trying to maintain lists of the dead, but too often a bulldozed trench is the final resting place for casualties on both sides.
Ukraine must be completely rebuilt when this is over. Many buildings are far, far too damaged to repair. I can see that entire cities will have to be razed to the ground, and the survivors will have to start anew. The Ukrainians tried to build before with subterranean shelters in mind, and I’d imagine the rebuilt Ukraine will require all construction to have underground shelter.
And the war dead will have their peace disturbed, when excavations everywhere will uncover these graves.
In particular the US policy of “concurrent return”, where US war dead are repatriated to the US as soon as practicable, is unusual by world standards. In fact, the US concern with dead soldiers is pretty strange in world/historical terms.
In WWI it was seen as extremely weird and offensive to the Europeans that the US would want to disinter the war dead for shipment home and subsequent reburial. We were the ONLY country who did this. Same thing in WWII- we spent a LOT of money and a lot of time disinterring the dead from temporary cemeteries, shipping about 60% home, and then reinterring the rest in permanent cemeteries.
Nowadays, it’s practical for say… the UK to do the same, because air transport is common enough, and casualties are low enough to make it possible, and the PR advantages outweigh the cost.
But Russia likely has a very… WWII type mentality about it, and are expecting to recover the bodies when the fighting’s over- either from where they fell, or from mass graves. Or maybe their plan is just to mark those and put up a memorial with names or something. Considering the state their logistical services seem to be in, I think that expecting them to collect and deal with a bunch of dead bodies in an effective fashion while trying to supply the fighting troops at the same time is not reasonable. Maybe just digging trenches with bulldozers is all they can handle, some of the time.
Thank you for the discussion on how the US handles war-dead. I did not know much about this, and I guess I assumed most militaries operated in a similar way. Ignorance fought.
The war graves for Commonwealth soldiers are normally overseas, near where they fell, and are maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, funded by six of the Commonwealth nations.
« Between the crosses, row on row »
(Although more permanent stone markers were substituted for the crosses later on. )
One of my piping friends served with the British military in Malaysia. He was practising in a war grave one day, when a woman came by. She had come all the way from Britain to visit the grave of her brother. Pipey helped her find the grave site and then she said, « Will you play for him? »
« Honoured to, ma’am, » he said and then solemnly played traditional tunes for the dead.
WW1 and WW2 were not fought on US soil. The American
people were spared the destruction of their communities, their industries, and their farmland.
They were also spared the deling with dead bodies, our military and our Allies, the dead of the opponents, and the horrible tragedy of dead civilians.
In peacetime, death is sanitized. People do encounter gruesome deth, but on a much much smaller scale than wartime. For the most part, US citizens will never encounter what “armed conflict” can do to a human body, or the impossible numbers of the dead.
The tragedy of death that is not attended to immediately is decomp. Such unimaginable horror of parts that were once human beings, along with the outcome of decay!
My father flew a bomber in China during World War Two. He flew not only his bomber, but also flew whatever he was assigned when the job required. One time, he mentioned he had to fly a planeload of casualties. The soldiers had yet to be placed in caskets; they were still in body bags.
And he barely talked above a whisper when he said, “Some of them were leaking…”
I’m guessing it’s more likely that they simply expunge the dead soldiers from the record books, and deny they ever existed. If any mothers/families make a fuss, they will be invited for a new position at penal colony No. 6 of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia.
That’s unusual; the typical response for US forces in all theaters was to bury the dead in temporary cemeteries without caskets, and then after the war was over disinter them, and either rebury them in a permanent cemetery, or ship them to their relatives in the US.
Now the approach is to ship them to the US ASAP, and then either release them to their next of kin, or bury them in one of the National Cemeteries.
There are even several within the US- the RAF set up flight training schools in the US where there was plenty of room to fly without interfering with air defense or any other flight operations. The flight cadets who died in training accidents are buried in the US.