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From: Bryn Dolan battalion@earthling.net
Date: 5/16/00
Time: 5:53:02 PM
Remote Name: 210.141.67.161
Hi Rob,
Thanks for the quote; I've added it to his record on the database (it won't show up on the web site till the next update). Of course many soldiers had graves at the time that their mates were still around, but in the years between their deaths and the arrival of the Imperial War Graves Registration units, many of these were lost forever. After all, they were probably only marked at the time with a bit of wood or some rocks, after which the units would move on, never to return. So though he is buried *somewhere*, he is recorded as having no known grave because the location was lost. This happened in many cases on Gallipoli too. After the evacuation the Turks used some of the crosses marking the graves as firewood, or wild dogs disturbed them, or heavy rain and wind obliterated all trace of them, making them unidentifiable. By 1919 when the IWGC units arrived to officially record the graves and concentrate the many small cemeteries into larger ones, many men, though buried, were recorded as having no known graves. For example, in 'The Farm' cenetery, the loneliest of those at Gallipoli, only seven graves are marked with headstones ('known'), yet 652 men are buried there.
Regards,
Bryn