A reader commented to me verbally: "it seems as though you're, at least at one point in this, criticizing the fact that Kipling has a marked headstone."
Response: That's not the intent. Though I do have mixed feelings, and try to summarize those at the end, that there's a certain manifest injustice that so much time and effort was spent finding this one, otherwise unremarkable, Lieutenant in a war where there's 500k other unidentified graves. Walking around St. Mary's ADS, at first you're struck by how there's clearly very little foot traffic to the site and you wonder, where are the families. But then the obvious fact hits: even if the families wanted to visit, they can't visit an unidentified grave. The denial of DNA testing to produce identifications, while having some understandable cause so as to avoid disturbing their final rest, seems to be unbalanced against the interest in identifying the remains. Kipling's grave is surrounded by 1,600 other boys who are nameless burieds. That just feels wrong.
A reader commented to me verbally: "it seems as though you're, at least at one point in this, criticizing the fact that Kipling has a marked headstone."
Response: That's not the intent. Though I do have mixed feelings, and try to summarize those at the end, that there's a certain manifest injustice that so much time and effort was spent finding this one, otherwise unremarkable, Lieutenant in a war where there's 500k other unidentified graves. Walking around St. Mary's ADS, at first you're struck by how there's clearly very little foot traffic to the site and you wonder, where are the families. But then the obvious fact hits: even if the families wanted to visit, they can't visit an unidentified grave. The denial of DNA testing to produce identifications, while having some understandable cause so as to avoid disturbing their final rest, seems to be unbalanced against the interest in identifying the remains. Kipling's grave is surrounded by 1,600 other boys who are nameless burieds. That just feels wrong.