Solo dive on the U853 WWII German Submarine

[FiddlerOnTheRoof]

Rich... You got a beef against me or something?

 

[descent]

CT-Rich has his own opinion, held strongly.

Even though it doesn't quite overlap mine, it sounds well thought out, and seems to reflect a fundamental morality.

 

[FiddlerOnTheRoof]

I'm just playing with him! We cross paths often at Fort Wetherill in RI.

 

[CT-Rich]

Welcome to ScubaBoard Fiddler... I won't tell anyone about your split fins....

 

[Omisson]

Welcome to ScubaBoard Fiddler... I won't tell anyone about your split fins....

Well that explains everything ....

 

[Max Speed]

Dead bodies are just... Dead. Previous owners have moved on. Don't get so worked up.

 

[FiddlerOnTheRoof]

No split fins here Rich! Did you find your weights at the bottom of Fort Wetherill yet?

 

[Drin]

Thoughtless divers taking bones was mentioned in "Shadow Divers" but I don't know how widespread the problem is. Taking artifacts is also problematic, but there is a big difference between taking a plate and taking a man's watch and taking his femur.

I was standing in the Narragansett Dive Shop in 2007 when the phone rang and Charlie Walpole answered it only to have the anonymous person on the other end offer him $10,000 for a "Nazi skull from the U-Boat". To his credit Charlie simply hung up.

It's a difficult situation. I understand the need to respect a war grave and the remains of those persons entombed there. At the same time there are unscrupulous people who will desecrate the grave and are willing to do so for profit or to satisfy their morbid curiosity/misplaced loyalty to an ideology (in my opinion). Is it equally wrong to move found remains deeper inside the wreck to hopefully protect them from such depredations?

When I dove Truk in 2004 the Shinkoku Maru's operating theater still had a standing surgical table inside it. The table was piled with femurs found by divers and deposited there over the years. It was considered something of a shrine to the fallen and any bones found on the wreck were transported there and reverently placed with the others. Does the intent of the finder change the meaning of moving the remains?

I understand both sides of the argument, and I haven't answered all of these questions for myself, but I personally think that it's better to place remains where they can't be removed by souvenir hunters rather than leave them in plain view for anyone to take home with them.


-Adrian

 

[AfterDark]

This is definitely a situation where we divers can police ourselves. Taking human remains as souvenirs is wrong. Moving bones dislocated from the skeleton(s) in order to hide them from view and make them harder to reach is in my view a service to the fallen a show of respect. Others disagree which is their right but I doubt any country including ours would object to the respectful and well intentioned movement of war dead remains.

There has been disrespect shown to the remains on the U853 over the decades not many but then one time is one time too many. Again the lesson here is to police ourselves and not invite governmental involvement.

 

[doctormike]

Two options on this. 1) I stay where I fell with my crew mates. 2) My body be recovered and repatriated to my family or buried in a military cemetery. Having some tourist moving remains around for whatever reason isn't on the list. I can't imagine that anyone would approve of an American war grave being exhumed because some farmer thought the body would be better suited on the other side of road.

Maybe think of it this way. If these were infantrymen rather than sailors, and for whatever reason their remains couldn't be repatriated, you wouldn't consider it respectful to let them stay where they fell, right? It would be a sign of respect to bury them, rather than just leaving them out in a field. So what the OP did isn't like exhuming and moving remains, it's more like burying someone who is clearly not going to be sent home to a family cemetery in Germany. Protecting the remains.