Hi! I wrote this massive long (and slightly incoherent) post on the moral problems with not repatriating the War dead from World Wars One and Two.

The "soldier's five" explanation of that post is this: that after World War One, the bodies of the war dead were effectively "stolen" for political purposes by the head of the Imperial War Graves commission (a man named Fabian Ware).

So let's also set out some more terms; the British Army at the start of both wars was an industrial, western-style force with a modern logistics train. This was similar the other major powers of continental Europe say, France. Britain was also a protestant country, and not Catholic. The difference this later part makes might not be immediately apparent, but we'll get to that.

So going back to the first post, the way I use the word "stolen" might give the impression that keeping the bodies of the war dead from their relatives was not normal - and this is half correct. Before the First World War, "ownership" of the British body in a moral sense rested with the families, and those families were free to reclaim the body at any time - if they paid for it. Bodies rapidly decomposed - there were no refrigerated or mobile morgue units like there are today. Most commonly, the body was buried on-site and a note was made of its location. At some later date, the family would retrieve the remains and return them to the burial-place of choice. This was a costly enterprise.

For "lower ranks" this might seem a raw deal, and it is. However the British Army made institutional use of the soldiers' families before the large-scale industrial armies of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Prior to that point, it was not uncommon for wives and children to accompany their fathers and husbands on campaign; these "camp followers" completed tasks such as laundry, cooking, and other tasks which today are performed by specialized military units. In the context of death, the soldiers were killed and could be mourned by their family near where they fell without the need for costly transportation - the social network was also equipped and ready to deal with grief within their ranks. See the New Zealand Wars for examples of this practice.

For British sailors, bodies were not returned. Instead they were buried at sea, and a message would be rent from the Admiralty to the next-of-kin listed on their papers. (The Admiralty was the progenitor of all modern bureaucracies - the first modern office block, for instance was built for the British Navy). The bodies were not kept for pragmatic reasons - dead bodies on a slow and crowded wooden sailing ship is a recipe for sickness and filth (although Nelson was considered an exception, and was pickled in a barrel of brandy for transport back to British soil. Further, during periods such as the Napoleonic Wars, the British were blockading the French Coast - they were "on station" for months or even years, unable to go back to British soil. keeping bodies under those circumstances would have been untenable. We can actually see how poorly thought out bringing the bodies home would have been by contrasting the British practice historically with the French. Remember how I mentioned the French were Catholic? They did bring their sailors killed back to shore - if the sea hadn't made that decision for them - because they believed in the literal Resurrection of the body. During the Napoleonic Wars, the bodies were packed in the ballast sand at the bottom of the ships for transportation. I am unsure if this practice was implemented only by some captains or if it was policy, but it was widespread enough to be commented on by the RN. Making this practice slightly less disgusting, the French tended to stay close to their own shores and would have been able to off-load their grisly cargo much more swiftly than the British during the same period.

The advent of refrigeration, the distance between the families and the battlefield, and the introduction of conscription radically changed the understandings for how the war dead would be treated. Introducing conscription meant new social networks had to deal with their service-person being killed prematurely - mostly the middle class - and in a way that previous rituals and symbols could not cope with. But transportation costs and technology - for British people at least - should have made it practicable to return the bodies to the Home Isles.

Your school is therefore white-washing a phenomenon which was particularly painful for people trapped inside its web; for all classes, they were not socially equipped to deal with the bodies not being returned; for the least wealthy members of society, they were not near-enough to the conflict to mourn "on site"; and for the middle-class and the wealthy, they were forcibly prevented from returning the bodies themselves. This placed enormous strain on the social fabric of Britain, and its effects can be still felt today.

This was a massive question and I had to go over it tremendously quickly. I hope it was helpful though.