Records are reasonably accurate as to the numbers and general area in which most WW1 fatal military casualties occurred.

This is a remembrance project showing the true scale of the events.

At dusk on 10 November, volunteers report to depots set up along former battlefields. They collect life-size inflatable humanoid figures dressed in a facsimile of battledress (these figures will need to be cheaply mass produced in huge numbers) and transport them to designated grid references where they are inflated and fixed with weights, wires and pegs.

The figures would have the name, rank and date of death on a small panel on the chest. Where original photographs can be provided, the image of the actual soldier could be overprinted on the face.

Eventually, the scheme could be extended to include civilians who were killed in the battles.

The grid references will correspond as far as possible to the location of fatal casualties. For those whos body was never found, the head and hands will be transparent, to signify their "invisibility".

At dawn on November 11, there will be an endless vista of still, silent figures, standing shoulder to shoulder, or in groups, for hundreds miles, throught towns, cities, fields, hills and valleys. It would resemble a temporary version of the "Terracotta Army" but on a much larger scale.

Anyone viewing the scene could not fail to be impressed by the scale of the sacrifice.

At midnight on the 11th, the volunteers take them all down again and pack them away until the next year.
-- 8th of 7, Oct 17 2017

http://www.dailymai...shrouds-honour.html [xenzag, Oct 17 2017]

It's been done for the 20,000 who died on the first day of the Somme - see link.....
-- xenzag, Oct 17 2017


Not enough. Not nearly enough ....
-- 8th of 7, Oct 17 2017


[+] unless you're going full-on MadamTussad's, a shrouded - perhaps bloodied - figure is going to leave more of an impression than a mannikin in battledress.
-- FlyingToaster, Oct 17 2017


If you could get enough volunteers, you wouldn't need the mannequins.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 17 2017


Round up a mob of Germans at bayonet-point ? They understand that.

The french could do their WW1 battlefields, where they fought magnificently, but they couldn't do WW2 ... they'd run away, leaving the British behind.
-- 8th of 7, Oct 17 2017


If you ever included civilians, you would have a problem with concentration camps re: density.

Also, is it possible that the density of death for some WW1 battlefields would also be too high.
-- Bobble, Oct 17 2017


That would kind of be the point.

There used to be a morsel of received wisdom that "if every human were allocated one square metre of land, they could all stand on the Isle of Wight".

It is hard to understand how anyone, let alone an entire allegedly intelligent species, could be condemned to go to the Isle of Wight. But, leaving that aside, it's not a vast area of land.

So if each soldier were allocated one square metre, while some areas would indeed be very densely packed, they could be allowed to expand out as much as necessary to retain the overall effect.

Ypres, Verdun and many other battlefields might be problematic, but would be more impressive for that.
-- 8th of 7, Oct 17 2017



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