CREMATION IN TIMES OF WAR.
After a battle is over, the field of carnage is covered with the dead. I
think it cannot be questioned that these are disposed of in a very
careless manner in time of war; not only those who have been killed
during an engagement, but also those who succumb to disease. After a
great combat the slain are usually hastily interred in large trenches,
in which they are arranged in tiers, or piled pell-mell upon each other,
whereupon they are left to decompose. That no more calamity and sickness
results from such a mode of burial, than is usually the case, is due, I
believe, principally to the fact that great battles are generally fought
on fields far from the habitations of man.
War, God knows, is bad enough, but far worse are the diseases that
follow in its wake. The dead on the “field of honor,” which is soon
naught but a vast cemetery, are, as I have said above, inhumed as
rapidly as possible. There is no time to lose. Hurriedly thousands of
fallen braves are thrown into large pits, and barely covered with earth.
The comrades who have rendered them this last service move onward to
bury others, and leave them to vitiate the air and to form a terrible
herd of infection. Thus it is that a country which has already been
devastated by war is again brought to the verge of despair by the
appearance of typhus fever, dysentery, and other equally serious
maladies. Unfortunately, these diseases do not confine themselves to the
country in which the war has been waged, but also invade the lands of
the peaceful neighbors.
[Illustration:
THE CREMATORIUM AT ROME
(From Dr. Pini’s Work.)
]
There is much evidence to prove that what I say is true. Immediately
after the defeat of Darius, Alexander the Great was advised by the sage
Aristoteles to leave Arbela, to secure himself and his army from the
pestilential emanations of the dead.
When Syracuse was besieged by Hannibal, he decided to wound the feelings
of the Syracusans by desecrating their dead, who had been buried, as was
the custom in most ancient cities, outside of the city gates. He ordered
his troops to dig up the ill-fated corpses, cut them to pieces, and
strew them all over the field of battle, in full sight of their
horror-stricken relatives and friends. But this barbarous act was
followed by deserved punishment. Pestilence decimated the beleaguerers,
and scores upon scores of the soldiers fell victims to the fatal power
that arose, slow but sure, from the outraged dead.
Lucan has furnished us with an account of the terrible scourge that
befell the army of Pompey at Durazzo, because it had neglected to bury
the cadavers of the horses killed in the battle. For the same reason the
camp of Constantine the Great was once devastated by the plague.
Mr. William Eassie, the honorary secretary of the Cremation Society of
England, states (_vide_ his “Cremation of the Dead,” page 19):—
“With the ancient Athenians, when soldiers fell in battle, it was the
custom to collect them into tents, where they lay for a few days, to
ensure recognition. Each tribe then conveyed their dead in cypress
shells to the ceramicos, or places of public burning, an empty hearse
following behind, in memory of the missing.”
The first epidemic of spotted fever on record occurred in Spain, in
1490, and was due to the emanations arising from the decaying bodies
which had been left unburied on the battle-ground.
In 1796 (according to Desgenettes), a military surgeon by the name of
Vaidy supervised the burial of the soldiers and horses that had been
killed in a combat near Nuremberg. While the work was in progress, he
was attacked by colic and nausea, and afterwards suffered for several
days from a severe dysentery. His horse, after having been tortured by
severe abdominal pains, died on the evening of the day when he was taken
sick. Persons who were with Vaidy complained of the same symptoms as he.
During the campaign in Russia in 1812 many of the French soldiers who
perished in the disastrous retreat were burned by the enemy.
After the battle of Waterloo 4000 bodies were reduced to ashes on
funeral piles of resinous wood on the field of carnage.
The ravages of the typhus fever in the armies battling during the
Crimean War are yet well remembered, and were too great to be easily
forgotten.
An eye-witness (Trusen) of the siege of Sebastopol reported at the time
that: “Those who were but lately our brave soldiers have become greater
enemies of their successors in arms than the Russians themselves.
Barely, and sometimes not at all, covered by earth, their bodies emit a
pestilential miasma, which kills far better than powder and bullet, and
is more reliable than a gun. A bishop has been sent out to consecrate
the trenches in which the dead are piled up, yet the infection will
resist consecration and holy water. Unfortunately, the danger does not
come from our own troops alone. The wind carries the emanations of the
Russian dead into our intrenchments. We besiege Sebastopol, but
pestilence besieges us. The same Frenchmen who came to our rescue with
their sabres now poison us by their putrefaction. Animal remains also
vitiate the air. The cadaver of the noble battle-horse that carried its
rider bravely through the day of Balaklava now lies in the road, and
threatens the victorious dragoon who rode upon it with an inevitable
fate. Burial-ground and camp adjoin each other. Where the soldier fought
and fell is his grave, which is seldom far from the tents of the
surviving.”
During the expedition to Morea, the French made intrenchments in a
cemetery outside of Patras. All those who were ordered into the trenches
experienced first malarial symptoms, and were finally attacked by
typhoid fever.
The cholera mowed down more soldiers in the war between Austria and
Prussia, in 1866, than the missiles of either army.
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 was accompanied by dysentery and
typhus fever. After the battle of Gravelotte the German troops had to
camp for weeks upon the graves of their comrades, subjected all the time
to the most dangerous effluvia from the slain. The bodies of those that
fell at Metz were in many instances dug up by the Germans and
re-interred; since the hasty and superficial way in which they had been
buried in the first place caused contamination of the watercourses near
by, and pollution of the air.
The evils of earth burial were especially apparent in besieged forts,
for instance in Metz and Paris, 1870–71.
The communists at Paris evaded the evils of inhumation by burning their
dead in the casemates.
On July 14, 1877, during the war between Turkey and Russia, General
Tergankassoff informed his government at St. Petersburg, by despatch,
that the air in and about Bayazid was so contaminated by the
decomposition of the dead, that it would not only be unwise, but also
dangerous, to prolong the stay of the troops there.
On August 24 of the same year, the naval correspondent of the London
_Times_ stated that thousands of soldiers who fell in the Shipka Pass
were so superficially inhumed that relics of the dead, such as arms and
knees, protruded from the earth-heaps.
On the 14th of September following, the correspondent of the London
_Daily Telegraph_ declared that the stenches of the villages around
Hasankioe were unendurable; that the retreating invaders had cut off the
water-supply by filling up the wells with corpses; and that in
consequence the water had to be brought from a great distance. And on
the seventeenth of the same month, the _Times_ correspondent reported
that fever had broken out at Kezanlik; and that, within 600 yards of his
tent, some hundreds of uninhumed dead could be seen, relics of the
battle which took place some weeks previously. In order to lessen the
danger, the couriers passing along the Yemi Saghra road had actually to
ride with camphor in their mouths. This state of things is not only
deplorable, but pre-eminently shameful.
It is plain from the above that interment _en masse_, as it is practiced
during war at the present time, is very unsatisfactory, and often leads
to disastrous consequences. Unfortunately, burial in single graves is
impossible, for several reasons. In the first place, it would take up
too much time; secondly, too much room; and, thirdly, it would remove
too many men from the ranks of the combatants. Nothing remains to us,
therefore, but to look about us for some other mode of disposing of the
dead. The list of methods from which we may select one is not very
large. Various schemes have been proposed. One erratic genius actually
proposed to blow up the victims of human strife with dynamite. Of all
the ways of disposing of the slain, none is so good and advantageous as
cremation. History records many instances in which cremation was made
use of to destroy the dead after a battle.
Mr. Wm. Eassie reports: “During the wars between the English and the
Burgundians and the French,—the latter led by Joan of Arc,—the dead were
on one occasion piled up outside the city of Paris, and consumed in one
huge pyre.”
Twelve days after the battle of Paris, on the 30th of March, 1814, 4000
horses, killed during the combat, were burnt by the Germans in the
environs of Paris,—the woods of Montfaucon.
In the battle at Rivas, Nicaragua, on the 28th of June, 1855, between
government troops and Walker’s Filibusters, the latter lost their
commander, 12 officers, and 100 men, all of whom were cremated.
Many dead were reduced to ashes by the Carlists, after the battle of
Cuenca.
More than 40,000 human and animal remains had been inhumed in a very
superficial manner after the battle of Sedan, during the late
Franco-Prussian War. In consequence, the Belgian villages in the
neighborhood were visited by epidemics and infectious diseases. The
Belgian government was petitioned to remove the evil. It despatched
Colonel Creteur to examine into the grievances, and, if possible, remove
them. One’s hair stands on end when one reads the report of the colonel
on the condition of the Sedan battle-field. The only way to remedy the
evil was to destroy the dangerous cadavers by cremation, which was a
difficult task, under the circumstances, but which was nevertheless
accomplished by the ingenious Creteur. The colonel’s report is full of
horrible facts. The bodies of German soldiers in a trench at Laid-Trou
were covered so little by earth that carnivorous animals had already
devoured part of the hands and faces. Rain-water had caused 30 large
pits, containing the remains of Bavarians, to cave in, and had laid bare
the bodies. Between Belan and Bazailles, the owners of a field had
leveled the elevation of a Bavarian grave. Relics of the dead protruded
from the ground. The bodies were covered only by a thin layer of earth,
in which corn flourished luxuriantly. Wild bears, foxes, and dogs,
relishing the human flesh, helped to scratch away the soil over the
remains, as did the numerous crows upon the pit in which the horses had
been buried. Dogs, having once feasted on this fare, would not eat
anything else. Creteur at first could not obtain men to carry out his
plans, as every one who attempted to open the trenches contracted
phlyctæna, an eruption of the skin. Finally, by promising good pay, he
enlisted 27 workmen, whom he endeavored to protect by saturating their
clothing and moistening the graves with a solution of carbolic acid. But
this only intensified the phlyctæna. He then determined to cover the
graves with a layer of chloride of lime, and to pour diluted muriatic
acid upon them subsequently. By this means he succeeded in laying bare
the topmost layer of the corpses. He then had large quantities of coal
tar poured into the pit, which trickled down among the bodies to the
bottom, thoroughly covering the remains. He then had more chloride of
lime heaped upon the corpses, and finally had bundles of hay, previously
saturated with kerosene, thrown burning into the pit. Creteur declares
that from 200 to 300 bodies were consumed within 50 to 60 minutes. The
smoke, impregnated with the smell of the carbolic acid that was formed
by the combination of the chloride of lime and coal tar, was not
offensive, and proved entirely harmless to the workmen. About one-fourth
of all the contents remained in the pits, consisting of calcined bones
and a dry mass. These were again covered with chloride of lime, and then
the trenches were closed. In this way, 45,855 human and equine bodies
were disposed of.
[Illustration: THE MILAN CINERARIUM.]
Incineration in war-time should be obligatory—must be so in fact. At
present, cremation in portable furnaces is out of the question, because
it would take too long. Only the bodies of prominent officers might be
thus cremated and sent to the rear, so that they might rest under a
monument erected by the grateful people of the country that they served.
Under the existing circumstances, I think Creteur’s method would be the
best. By this means, several hundred bodies could be destroyed at once.
There ought to be a cremation corps in every division of an army. Better
yet it would be to organize a neutral society, like the Red Cross
Association, and call it the Society of the Black Cross. The members
might wear a black cross on their caps and on the left arm. After a
battle, the various corps of this society would begin their work,
gathering the dead and committing them to the flames. Thus we would
protect our brave soldiers, who offer up their lives for their beloved
country and our sake, from pestilence and disease.