First World War
Following the well-publicised return to
Britain of the remains of a few dozen soldiers killed during the early
stages of the First World War, the British government outlawed the
practice. One of the most high-profile of the returnees had been
Lieutenant William Gladstone MP, grandson of the eminent Victorian Prime
Minister and Lord Lieutenant of Flintshire.
As only the wealthy and well-connected
could afford the time and resources to arrange for the removal of their
loved one’s corpse, it was considered bad for morale on the home front
to see a handful of families able to mourn at a dead soldier’s grave,
whilst for the majority their son or husband would forever lie, as the
poet soldier Rupert Brooke put it, in `some corner of a foreign field /
That is forever England’.
