THE WAR DETECTIVES
Their sacrifice will never be forgotten – they lost their lives in Flanders in 1917 and now, recently recovered soldiers have been buried with full military honours, the MOD ‘ War Detectives’ tell Britain at War
On November 17, 2021, just over 104 years after they fell, nine soldiers of World War One were laid to rest. The service was organised by the Ministry of Defence’s Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre ( JCCC), also known as the MOD ‘War Detectives’, and was held at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s (CWGC) Tyne Cot Cemetery near Ypres in Belgium.
His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent attended the moving service as the Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers and President of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Through a combination of military research, anthropology and DNA testing, the War Detectives successfully managed to identify seven of the nine, while the eighth casualty, who remains unknown, is believed to have been serving with the same unit (11th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers).
The ninth man is sadly still unknown by name or regiment.
The 11th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers was raised in 1914 and arrived on the Western Front in 1915 …
