During my trip in October I went to the wonderful Flavigny le Petit French Cemetery Kinda between Le Cateau and St. Quentin. The Cemetery was a treat its self as it was a joint one with Geman Soldiers and even more unique there was a row of British graves seperating the two!

The Cemetery did raise three questions. I will show you in Pics below;

1. Why did some grave not have name plates - okay maybe restoration, but they were just a row of a few not here and there.

2. Why were the Muslim graves in line with all the rest and not facing Mecca (which happened in Verdun)

3. And what about the Grave for this man? Obviously Joseph, but his surname - _ _ _ _ OL. My idea was he was shot through his dog tag and that was the only bit of his surname that survived.

1... As you say, possibly restoration. If they become unreadable/damaged they tend to be removed until replaced (sometimes months!)

2... this is actually quite common. Douaumont is a "flagship" cemetery and so "goes through the motions". The bodies themselves aren't necessarily alligned to the headstones.

3... French graves indicate partial IDs along with complete. Rather than just putting "unknown", they'll show what little info they have. (There's one in La Targette that is "presumed to be", but the ID was rejected by the family and so this fact is also mentioned on the headstone, for example). More likely to be info gleaned from a decayed tag or damaged (original) grave marker than to have actually been shot through it (the rapid decay of ID discs was such a problem that it led to the official manufacture of tags in a different alloy by mid-1916). Alternatively,there may just have been decayed remnants of a livret on the body also (being paper, these certainly don't last long), or maybe a damaged name tag in the uniform.

dave.

Thanks Dave, all what I kind of though. The second point though, that recent BBC documentary about Muslims in WWI - didn't the Germans try and use propaganda against the Allies saying to Muslims we were not treating them with respect and burying them towards Mecca?

But Its a great Cemetery and I like the pic that I will post when I find it of a Muslim and jewish grave side by side. Just shows were are all equal in death.

Muslim / Jewish graves