Ein Grab Marker für sowjetische Soldaten in einem deutschen Soldatenfriedhof (kriegsgräberstätte-Ehrenfriedhof) aus dem WW 1 Friedhof in Merzig, Deutschland
From the very first battles in the early weeks of the fighting on The Western Front the number of military dead was already in the tens of thousands. The French Army suffered particularly badly, with a figure of 80, 000 dead out of 250, 000 killed and wounded by the end of the First Battle of the Marne (5 to 12 September 1914). The scale of casualties in the First World War was unprecedented. Thousands of soldiers were being buried on the battlefields in individual or communal graves by their comrades. They were often buried where they fell in action, or in a burial ground on or near the battlefield. A simple cross or marker might be put up to mark the location and give brief details of the individuals who had died. In the early weeks of the war the British Army had no official register to whom these battlefield burials could be formally reported with a name and the location of the grave. Those individuals who reached a hospital in a safe area behind the fighting lines and who died of their wounds would usually be buried in a cemetery near to the hospital. Often it would be in an existing town or village cemetery or in a specially created annexed burial plot. These burials could be registered and their locations marked.
