Giles Fraser (It took the horrors of the trenches to bring democracy to death, 25 August) is right to praise the success of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in ensuring that, in death, other ranks were given the same honours as officers. But during the first world war itself it was rather different. My great aunt, Sister Edith Appleton, served in France and Flanders from October 1914 until Christmas 1919 and in her diary (www.anurseatthefront.org.uk), which she wrote throughout the war, she recorded on 31 July 1915 an exchange between a nursing colleague and a distressed mortuary corporal tasked with burying unidentified men: “His one job was to sort out Roman Catholics and Church of England so that each padre might bury his own. Then he found a fresh difficulty over one whom he thought was an officer but had nothing to mark him. ‘And ’ow am I to bury ’im – as a’ officer or man?’ Sister said: ‘Surely they all get buried the same?’ ‘No, they don’t,’ said the bewildered Cpl. ‘Men’s coffins is hammered – Officers’ is screwed’.”
Dick Robinson
Blockley, Gloucestershire
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