Over there!
Posted on 08/22/2004 5:08:17 PM PDT by UnklGene
Bodies of WWI soldiers found in Italian glacier -
The preserved bodies of three Austrian soldiers killed in World War I have been found at the foot of an Italian glacier, 86 years after their deaths, a museum in northern Italy said on Sunday.
They were found by Maurizio Vincenzi, the director of the military history museum at the small town of Peio in the Trentino region, member of a mountain rescue team and military history buff.
The bodies were found 3,400 metres up a mountain called San Matteo and are said to be exceptionally well preserved.
They had been spotted by Vincenzi as he scanned the glacier with binoculars and noticed marks on it.
The area was the scene of fighting between Austrian and Italian troops in 1918 and the Austrian soldiers would have belonged to a regiment based at Dimaro nearby.
It is believed that the men died when they were attacked with grenades.
Their bodies have been taken to a morgue in Peio and will be transferred to a military cemetery.
According to Vincenzi it is 80 years since the preserved body of a World War I soldier has been found.
Wow, and preserved well if they believe it was a grenade that did them in.
Over there!
Here's something that might interest you, sort of current events archeology!
100 years is nothing. What was Ötzi - 4 or 5 thousand years old?
"A Soldier of the Great War" by Mark Helprin relates a stories of fighting between Italian and German (perhaps Austrian) Alpine troops. A very worthwhile read.
Anything having to do with 'A Farewell To Arms'?
They tend to last well at those high altitudes. The upper regions of Everest are littered with dead climbers from the last eighty years.
ping
Good, thanks.
I was gonna post this from The Telegraph but my search turned up your post.
Possibly, if they were picking up a live grenade at the time it went off.
VIKING discovery in Ireland (9th century):
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200408/s1181842.htm
Great pix, the short carbines are M-95 straight pull actions shooting a 6.5x56r cartridge. I have one and it shoots very well.
Can't make out the long rifles though, horrible conditions
to fight in.
On a glacier, it's a different sequence of events..Glaciers are "living" masses of ice...the bodies would have become covered with snowfall..which then compressed as ice..and would have become buried...example..WW II planes thar crashed on Greenland were found recently buried under 250 FEET of ice...but the glacier, moves..it flows to the mouth and as the glacier gets shallower, the pieces..metal, bodies, rocks..get oushed up tot he surface..
Hey remember that mummy that Bill Clinton said he would date?
A chilling reminder, enter into mutual defense alliance with Italians at own risk.
The one where they went down for the P 38? I watched a docu on that.
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