Jason Urbanus covers some recently World War I discoveries, mostly in terms of more bodies discovered, in an offline article, “A Last Day, Reclaimed,” Archaeology, November / December 2016 pp 48-53. In the midst of the deadly chaos of trench warfare, the medical personnel retained some sense of humanity:
As bodies were transferred to the cemetery, their personal military identification tags would have been kept by the hospital staff. Archaeologists have discovered that in some instances a death certificate, recording a cause of death, had been placed in a glass bottle and buried with the deceased. Many of these documents have become faded and illegible over the past century, but they are evidence of an attempt to keep some kind of identification with the soldiers.
Struggling against the madness of that war.
(Emphasis mine.)
