MISSING SOLDIERS

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 222, 14 June 1920, Page 5

MISSING SOLDIERS

SEARCH IN FLANDERS AND ■ ■ PRANCE. The Special''Military Mission, under Dame Adelaide Livingstone, sent by the British War Office to discover the fate of missing soldiers, have visited, as far as pcssib.e, every village where there is any reason to believe information is obtainable in Flanders and France. . The inhabitants of every village and farm, outside tho devastated area where British have fallen, are being questioned, and have helped the Mission by furnishing clues which have frequently led to the discovery of tho exact date of death or of the grave of a hitherto missing man.

Whore definite information of this Kind is unobtainable okes have frequently been given leading to the identiScation of the name or number of the German hospital in whioh an "unknown British soldiier" died. Inquiries are then made in Germany and frequently result in definite information of identify being obtained.

The Brussels correspondent of the "Daily Mail" accompanied the chief of the Mission" on one of the expeditions to Hautrage, where Dame.Adelaide Lvvi&g6tone had already made many inquiries in connection with some 150 "unknown British soldiers" Imfied in the Germnn military cemetery. She had learned thnt these men were killed in the lighting near M6ns at tho bediming of the war and were originally buried where they fell dn isolated graves scattered throughout the neighbouring districts. They wore re-buried by the Germans in 1918. A young Belgian who had helped the Germans to remove the bodies to the cemetery was able to indicate the sites of tho original graves in tho neighbouring villages. In many cases the dwellers in the cottages were able to produce payboots end photographs that may lead to identification.

One produced a penknife, believed to be the property of n missing man marked with tie name "Williams" cf the 2nd K. 0.5.8. Tho local baker, a woman trundling a barrow piled high with round flat loaves, said she possessed a photograph of two little English girla ' Thoir father had given- it her the day before he was Wiled.

A woman stated that she had buried a tobacco box fulPof belongings of British soldiers, but that, unfortunately, she could not remember where. It will be readily understood that much of this long and arduous work leads onC.y to negative results, but the knowledge that ovory inquiry had been made by experts, as soarchingly and as minutely and sympathetically as it would bo possible tor anyone to make it, should bring comfort to the hearts of those mourners who Jiavo anxiousi'y been expecting- news of their lost ones.