It’s been nearly a century since an Allied shell exploded above a bunker in the Alsace region of France, entombing 21 German soldiers.
They lay undisturbed since their deaths in 1918 until excavation work for a road building project uncovered the mass grave recently.
Many of the skeletal remains were found in the same positions the men had been in at the time of the collapse, prompting experts to liken the scene to Pompeii, according to The Telegraph.
“A number of the soldiers were discovered sitting upright on a bench, one was lying in his bed and another was in the fetal position having been thrown down a flight of stairs,” the publication reported.
The men, part of the 6th Company, 94th Reserve Infantry Regiment, were among 34 soldiers killed during the explosion.
Thirteen bodies were recovered from the underground shelter shortly afterward, but the remaining men had to be left under a mountain of mud as it was too dangerous to retrieve them.
In addition to bodies, such personal effects as weapons, wine bottles and wallets were also found.
“Even the skeleton of a goat was found, assumed to be a source of fresh milk for the soldiers,” according to The Telegraph.
Archaeologists believe the items were so well preserved because hardly any air, water or lights had penetrated the tunnel.
The 300-foot long tunnel was located 18 feet beneath the surface near the small town of Carspach in eastern France.
The bunker was big enough to shelter 500 men and had 16 exits.
It would have been equipped with heating, telephone connections, electricity, beds and a pipe to pump out water.
The items will be taken to a laboratory, cleaned and examined.
The names of the dead are known and inscribed on a memorial in the nearby German war cemetery of Illfurth.
The bodies have been handed over to the German War Graves Commission but unless relatives can be found and they request the remains to be repatriated, it is planned that the men will be buried at Illfurth, according to the publication.
The French attacked the shelter on March 18, 1918, with aerial mines that penetrated the ground and blasted in the side wall of the shelter in two points.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers who served on the Western Front during the First World War are still unaccounted for.
(Above: Preserved timbers that formed the walls of the tunnel where 21 German soldiers from World War I were buried in the Alsace region of France. Photo credit: The Telegraph.)
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