A British historian has stumbled across records from World War One that have been virtually untouched for 90 years. The records contain the personal details of soldiers who died in the war and may reveal the final resting places of many of them. The records include U.K. soldiers as well as many from South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. While not mentioned, I suspect Canadian soldiers would also be listed in this archive. The German Army recorded the information and gave it to the Red Cross during the war.
The records were stored in Switzerland and remained untouched for 90 years; apparently no one ever looked at them until a few weeks ago. For many families, this will be the first opportunity for them to learn their relatives' dates and places of death and internment.
Peter Barton shows Robert Hall some of his findings at the Red Cross archive in Geneva in a BBC video at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7940569.stm.
My thanks to Gary Routh for telling me about these records.
