Missing: The Need for Closure after the Great War (Hardback)
Imprint: Pen & Sword Military
Pages: 292
Illustrations: 64
ISBN: 9781526760968
Published: 30th October 2019
Last Released: 4th December 2019
As seen in the press
As reviewed in the Daily Mail, March 2020: 'Agonising search for the lost fallen: A mother's quest for her son's body after his RAF plane was shot at during the Great War.'
As seen on Good Morning Britain, November 2019.
As featured in the Sunday Times, November 2019: 'Mother's five-year battle to find grave of First World War hero son.'
As featured in the Daily Express, November 2019: 'World War One mystery – the story behind the hero pilot with no resting place.'
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In May 1918, Angela and Leopold Mond received a knock on the front door. It was the postman and he was delivering the letter every family in the United Kingdom dreaded: the notification of a loved one’s battlefield death, in their case the death in action of their eldest child, their son, Lieutenant Francis Mond.
The twenty-two year old Royal Flying Corps pilot, along with his Observer, Lieutenant Edgar Martyn, had been shot down over no man’s land, both being killed instantly. If there was one crumb of comfort, it was the news that a brave Australian officer, Lieutenant A.H. Hill, had gone out under fire and recovered both bodies: there would, at the very least, be a grave to visit after the war.
And then, nothing. No further news was forthcoming. Angela Mond wrote to the Imperial War Graves Commission asking for further details but there was confusion. No one knew where Mond's and Martyn’s bodies were buried. There had been an initial trail: both bodies had been taken to the village of Corbie and a lorry summoned to take them away, but from that last sighting both men had simply disappeared. ‘It seems incredible that all traces of the burial of two officers duly identified, should be lost,' wrote Angela to the authorities in December 1918.
And so began one of the most extraordinary private investigations undertaken in the aftermath of the Great War. Aged 48 and the mother of five children, Angela, a wealthy and well-connected socialite from London’s West End, embarked on an exhaustive personal quest to find her son, an investigation that took her to the battlefields and cemeteries of France and into correspondence with literally hundreds of French civilians and British and German servicemen. In the meantime, as she searched, she bought the ground on which her son’s plane had crashed and erected a private memorial to Francis, a memorial that still survives.
Angela’s quest for her son is reflective of the wider yearning amongst those who lost loved ones in the Great War: the absolute need find a form of solace through the resolution of a search. More than 750,000 servicemen and women had been killed, half of whom had no known grave. After the Great War there were families who hunted for their missing sons for a decade or more and when no body was recovered, back doors were forever left unlocked just in case that son should one day return. Lieutenant Francis Mond’s case was exceptional, perhaps unique in the circumstances of his death and subsequent disappearance, but the emotions behind the search for his body were shared by families all over the country.
"This is a well-told story and a most worthwhile book".
RUSI Defence Systems Journal
What to do with all the bodies, occupied many great minds after the First World War?! Search and ye will find. The dead were strewn over battle fields, not only in Europe but in far off places with strange sounding names. Some were buried in makeshift graves and others still lay where they fell, often in now flooded shell-holes. To add to the dilemma, many bodies had lost their dog tags and were buried in graves, that not their own. Meanwhile, in Whitehall, civil servants conjugated on who owned the cadaver, the Army, their regiments, relatives, or the owner of the land where the soldier died? More thoughts, more questions.
Richard Gough, Published author, historian
To add to the growing problems, wealthy families began to arrive on the battlefields searching for their kin to bring home and buried in family graves. Millions of middle, and working-class families were flooding the War Office with letters seeking the whereabouts of their relatives. Each required an answer but first find the body!
Richard Van Emden's excellent book, based on one women's attempt to trace her son's body, a pilot in the recently formed Royal Air Force. Her grief took her to the battlefields in a seemingly hopeless search for her son's body. Richard van Emden's excellent, well researched book highlights the problems and need provide relatives with memorial on which to direct their grief. The book also provides a list of sources and permissions including the titles of published memoirs, books, unpublished diaries, web sites, archives and papers held in The Commission Archives, Commonwealth War Graves Commission in Maidenhead, Berkshire.
Richard van Emden has a wonderful engaging writing style, and uses it beautifully here to blend in the gripping story of Angela’s search for her son’s grave with how the nation was coping with the impact of loss in the postwar years. ‘Missing’ is just one vignette in what would have been a whole gallery of similar stories. Thanks to the author and Mond’s family this story can be shared... This is an excellent book, one of the best read this year. Thoroughly recommended.
Redcoat and Khaki
Read the full review here
This book brings us a very good and important account of the determination of one mother who is trying to find the location of her son’s grave while this is not a rare event sadly due to the huge numbers of men who died during WW1. We read about her search through many avenues, and we are given an insight into the grief and loss of so many families during that period of time. I would like to say this is a very moving and emotional story, beautifully written by the author Richard Van Emden and good on Pen and Sword Books for publishing this story. It gives the reader a lot to think about and I would like to see more books like this. This maybe a short review but let’s just say this will probably be in my 2020 Book of the Year list with a 5 star rating. Nuff’ said.
UK Historian
Click here to listen to Richard Van Emden interview on
Talk Radio Europe with presenter Giles Brown on the mid morning show
Francis Mond’s parents erected a memorial to their son in the field where his plane crashed. Van Emden’s book provides him with another.
Daily Mail 26/3/20
The airmen’s tale is fascinating enough, but it is from that base that the author develops the unfolding history of how the army, War Office and ultimately the Imperial, later Commonwealth, War Graves Commission dealt with the huge numbers of dead; their identification; their recovery and burial; their documentation and their commemoration. That we can today find details of a soldier who lost his life within a few seconds of online research; visit immaculately kept and inspirational cemeteries; gasp and still mourn at the “intolerably nameless names” listed on the huge memorials to the missing is their lasting legacy. This is a story that must be known and “Missing” could scarcely be bettered for anyone wishing to know more. It is thoughtful, sincere and well presented and I highly recommend it.
The Long, Long Trail
Read the full review here
The book can only touch on some aspects of this huge subject, but it is sensitively and clearly written and worth reading by the many whose relatives still have no known grave.
WDYTYA? Magazine, February 2020 – reviewed by Phil Tomaseli
Everyone eventually dies but sudden early death is a severe shock for the bereaved, more invasive when the body has not been located or recovered. The author has a lengthy interest in The Great War and provides a unique appraisal of an often neglected consequence of the conflict. – Most Highly Recommended.
Firetrench
Read the full review here
Van Emden’s research really brings the story to life through highlighting the impact the war had on those left behind. If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading Missing yet, make sure you order it now – you will not be disappointed.
WW1 Geek
Read the full review here
Editor's Choice
The Great War magazine, March 2020
As someone whose grandfather died at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and whose body was never found and buried, this moving story resonates with me to an extent I would never have believed possible. I grew up with only one grandparent, my mum's mum, and there were several members of my older generation of family who had served in the Great War who all came back. But the story of my grandfather is one that I can now never discover. I have a photo of him before he joined the army at the age of around thirty, and there is a mystery surrounding the subsequent life of his wife, my other grandmother. But Richard Van Emden, who is an expert on all things to do with the Great War, has taken one such story and transformed it into something quite special and moving. Extraordinary.
Books Monthly
Listed in 'Books of 2019' feature
History Revealed
A hugely engaging & fascinating book by Richard van Emden which gives us a moving & insightful look into the missing of WW1. Not just highly recommended, this is essential reading. The best Great War book of 2019 in my view.
Paul Reed via Twitter
Read the full review via Twitter
Richard Van Emden is in a class of his own among WWI historians. He's a leading light of oral history and personally interviewed nearly 300 WWI veterans when he was a young man. His latest book, Missing, is more than just another blood and guts in the trenches story. It recounts in poignant detail the efforts of RAF pilot Francis Mond's family - especially his mother Angela - to find his last resting place after his death in action in May 1918. Along the way, Richard tells the story of the official Western Front cemeteries and memorials now visited by hundreds of thousands of people every year. A masterclass in history-telling from start to finish.
Matt Nixson
Included in the 'Christmas Gift Guide' feature
History of War, issue 75
As featured in
Daily Express 9/11/19
As featured in
Daily Express 11/11/19
As featured in
The Sunday Times 4/11/19
Angela Mond's son, a pilot, was shot down over France during the First World War, but where was his body? She spent years trying to find him, longing for closure and personal peace. Van Emden interviews her 91 year old granddaughter as he explores whether a sense of closure is possible in times of war.
The Bookseller 12/7/19
The author delivers a very good account of the determined search by a mother for the location of her son’s grave; not a unique search given the very large number of ‘missing’ and the unidentified graves. Through the prism of her search and her accomplished detective work we are given an insight to the grief and frustrated loss of so many families. Of course few were able to achieve identification, and recent research into the competence of the exhumation of bodies on the battlefields has further questioned how many more men might have been identified. However this is a very good narrative that gives proper value to the subject.
Michael McCarthy
Michael McCarthy. Battlefield Guide
About Richard van Emden
Richard van Emden interviewed 270 veterans of the Great War, has written extensively about the soldiers' lives, and has worked on many television documentaries, always concentrating on the human aspects of war, its challenge and its cost to the millions of men involved. Richard van Emden’s books have sold over 660,000 copies and have appeared in The Times’ bestseller chart on a number of occasions.
He has also worked on more than a dozen television programmes on the Great War, including the award-winning Roses of No Man’s Land, Britain’s Boy Soldiers, A Poem for Harry, War Horse: the Real Story, Teenage Tommies with Fergal Keane and most recently, Hidden Histories: WW1’s Forgotten Photographs. He lives in London.
Reported Missing in the Great War 100 Years of Searching for the Truth (Hardback)
Of the one million British and Empire military personnel who were killed in action, died of wounds, disease or injury or were missing presumed dead during the First World War, over half a million have no known grave. Of these, nearly 188,000 are buried anonymously in Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries, with a stone bearing the epitaph ‘Known Unto God’. The remains of a further 339,000 lie scattered across the wartime battlefields, having been buried in marked graves that were subsequently obliterated as front lines moved backwards and forwards, or destroyed forever in the carnage…
By John Broom, Paul ReedClick here to buy both titles for £45.00
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