Known Unto God

Why were there so many missing in the First World War? And what happened during the Second World War and in the other wars of the twentieth century? Both world wars produced casualties on an unprecedented scale. The missing were the victims of increasingly mechanised warfare. One minute they were there, the next they had vanished, vaporised by a shell.

Known Unto God describes the exhaustive hunt for missing servicemen. It looks at how individual families reacted to the shocking news that their husband, son or brother was missing and how many mothers and wives could never accept the loss of their loved ones.

This book reveals the bureaucratic process behind the hunt for the missing and demonstrates how vital information gathered from the Red Cross and other sources was carefully pieced together to discover the fate of these men.

Simon Fowler considers the way we memorialise the missing through the Cenotaph, the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, the Menin Gate, Thiepval and many other monuments to the missing across the world.