For the men on burial detail, exhuming and burying their former comrades was an extremely difficult and traumatic task. Those who volunteered for the job were paid an extra 2s 6d per day (worth around £24.10 today).

‘For the first week or two I could scarcely endure the experiences we met with, but I gradually became hardened,’ wrote Private J. McCauley, who worked with a burial detail for around three months in 1918.

Members of the Chinese Labour Corps were involved in exhuming and reburying the dead.  Private Cauley described his work in an account which is preserved by the Imperial War Museum, and gives an insight into the exact horrors of this work.

Often have I picked up the remains of a fine brave man on a shovel. Just a little heap of bones and maggots to be carried to the common burial place. Numerous bodies were found lying submerged in the water in shell holes and mine craters; bodies that seemed quite whole, but which became like huge masses of white, slimy chalk when we handled them. I shuddered as my hands, covered in soft flesh and slime, moved about in search of the disc, and I have had to pull bodies to pieces in order that they should not be buried unknown. It was very painful to have to bury the unknown.

(Private McCauley’s account is held by the Imperial War Museum: J. McCauley, IWM DOCS 97/10/1.)

Source: Burying the First World War Dead