Eiserbeck, Scholtz, Weiss, Wolff Follow Up

[Bettors Pub]

The recent post on these four got me thinking. Was there a protocol that determined whether a pilot that was KIA was sent home ??? Accomplishment, rank, nobility, economic - a combination of all ??? Logistics ???

PLM winners and nobelmen I would think would be a given. Kirschstein and Gontermann I know were buried in France.

Economic ??? Unsure. Hans Adam was a school teacher and Ernst Hess was a draftsman and both were sent home.

Weiss and Wolff were aces of some note. If I remember correctly, Weiss was nominated for the PLM yet he was buried at the Hero's Cemetery at Cappy.

Thorsten's amazing site is filled with "unknown" pilots and observers that "made it home". Just curious.

TIA for your thoughts.

[frontflieger]

Hi,

I really do not know why some officers were brought home and others not.

Thorsten

[ONEALM]

As I understand it, the original U.S. policy was that any family who wanted their soldiers brought home would be subsidized by the US Govt. to have that done. Later, when the number of casualties increased, they backed off that policy - an embarrassment in my view.

Following this, I'm fairly certain that families had to pay their own freight so to speak if they wanted their loved ones brought back to the States. Some chose not to for sentimental reasons, some simply could not afford to bring them home.

For example, Harold Bulkley, who was killed in a training crash in England on 18 Feb 1918, is still buried in England. He was originally at the graveyard at Heston Church, near Hounslow, but was moved when the U.S. started consolidating burials to the US military cemeteries. His parents were well-off and could have brought him home, but his family roots a few generations back were in England and his parents decided to leave him in England.

In the post-war, Bulkley's father was invited to speak at Heston and part of his address contains his reasons for leaving his son buried overseas.

Again and again, it had been said that wherever a British soldier lies, there is a part of old England. The ancestry from which our boy sprang was of English origin and nothing could have seemed more fitting to us then that all which was mortal should have been committed to this consecrated ground, near where he fell. To us, this is a piece of American amid a people whose kindness of heart has been proved again and again unto us and amid a country with which the ties are innumerable and must be inseparable

I suspect that most of the foreign nationals buried in France or England are there either because their families could not afford to bring them home, or because the families thought the soldier would rather be buried where they fell or with their comrades.

[Michael_Dailey]

And it goes all the way up the ladder. GEN George S. Patton Jr. is buried in Luxembourg if memory serves me correctly.