{"id":159143,"date":"2019-10-10T13:04:06","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T12:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=159143"},"modified":"2019-10-10T13:11:42","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T12:11:42","slug":"thirteen-unknown-first-world-war-soldiers-to-be-laid-to-rest-a-century-after-they-died-uk-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=159143","title":{"rendered":"Thirteen unknown First World War soldiers to be laid to rest a century after they died | UK News"},"content":{"rendered":"
Thirteen unknown soldiers who died fighting in Belgium during the First World War will be laid to rest today, more than a century after they died.<\/p>\n

The war-dead, all from the UK and Commonwealth nations, will be buried side-by-side with full military honours near Ypres.<\/p>\n

It has not been possible to identify the 13 unknown soldiers, but at least two are believed to be British.<\/p>\n

The ceremony at Wytschaete Military Cemetery in Heuvelland forms one of the final chapters to the Dig Hill 80 project, which discovered the remains of 110 soldiers.<\/p>\n

The project led a 1.1 hectare crowdfunded archaeological excavation at the former site of Hill 80 in Wytschaete, on land that had been allocated for future housing development.<\/p>\n

550 metres of trenches and 430 bomb craters were excavated in the dig between April and July 2018, with the remains of 110 soldiers – including British, French, German and South African men – discovered.<\/p>\n

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\nThe ceremony will take place at Wytschaete Military Cemetery on Thursday. File pic<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Dig Hill 80 was highly publicised at the time, attracting international media attention and celebrity patronage from comedian Al Murray and support from military historian Dan Snow.<\/p>\n

The service later will be conducted by Father Patrick O’Driscoll, chaplain to the 1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, supported by present-day serving fusiliers from the regiment who form the bearer parties and a firing party.<\/p>\n

The casualties will be interred in three coffins, with three Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones marking their collective final resting places.<\/p>\n

Two coffins will each contain one unknown soldier, with a third containing the partial remains of 11 unknown individuals.<\/p>\n

The casualties will be interred together in keeping with burial tradition, ensuring that those who served and died together are buried and commemorated together.<\/p>\n

Hill 80 was the site of a windmill before the First World War, but became an entrenched German gun position following the capture of the village of Wytschaete in 1914.<\/p>\n

The location afforded observational advantage to the Germans as it overlooked the town of Ypres and formed part of the Messines Ridge.<\/p>\n

The site remained in German hands until the Battle of Messines in June 1917 when it was recaptured.<\/p>\n

Hill 80 was again taken by the Germans during the Battle of the Lys in 1918, before finally returning to Allied hands in September 1918.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thirteen unknown soldiers who died fighting in Belgium during the First World War will be laid to rest today, more than a century after they died. The war-dead, all from the UK and Commonwealth nations, will be buried side-by-side with full military honours near Ypres. It has not been possible to identify the 13 unknown […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":159144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-more"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=159143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/159144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=159143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=159143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=159143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}