"M.P.D." Missing Presumed Dead

[Barbara.H]

My great-uncle's WWI medal roll card has "MPD 29/8/1916".  Missing presumed dead.

[Douglas McGibbon, Pte 17260, 8th Batt South Lancs Regiment]

How long did it take to decide that he wasn't coming back?  Did the seven-year rule apply even to the fallen on the Somme?  He is not in the National Roll for the Great War, and I wondered if it was because he was still only 'missing' when it was published, rather than officially dead.

I have this sad vision of his mother, clinging on to a hope that he might still return one day   

Barbara

[liverpool annie]

Hi Barbara !

I've seen variable lengths of time ... but Stephen Nulty posted this on another site and I think maybe this will give you some idea ! ( even though it is kind of "flowery " !! ) hope this helps !

Missing!
By Max Pemberton, Weekly Dispatch, 9th September 1917

If, in an hour of calm, you look from a height over No Man’s Land, you realise chiefly that it is a scene of mystery.

The dead lie there whom no human hands have buried. The black earth has hidden the bodies of many for whom perchance British homes are waiting. Men have crossed that wilderness with the fire of life in their eyes, have been seen for an instant in the whirlwind of the fight, and then have been no more heard of. “Carry on� may have been the last words they were heard to speak. The loom of the smoke enveloped them. The crash of the guns forbade question or answer. And so they were lost to our knowledge, and all that the War Office an tell us at the moment is that the officer commanding has reported them as missing.

There is, perhaps, no penalty of the war quite as heavy as this. Its burdens are the same for rich or poor. Alike in the cottage and the castle the daily thought is of the son whose fate is unknown. Every item of news is scanned eagerly for those tidings which shall enlighten.

The more adventurous embark upon undertakings which are often hopeless from the start. They question brother officers or privates; they have been known to go to Holland or to Switzerland – they cling to hope most precious, as drowning men to a straw. The boy cannot be dead. They refuse to believe it.

Now let us see just what the War Office is doing in these cases, and what are the chances for a man reported “missing�.

In the first place, let it be understood that no such report is made until the officer commanding has made exhaustive enquiries on his own account. The lad went over; was seen in the fight; he did not return. In many cases, some solder who was near him can give a fairly true account of what happened. He saw the poor fellow struck by a shell; he is sure he is dead. Or, again, the man fell and did not rise – or he may have been plainly cut off from his party and is obviously in the hands of the Germans. None of these suppositions, however, satisfies the C.O.

Men have been seen to fall apparently stark dead and in a few months time they have been heard of in German prison camps. In the early days of the war, fugitives roved from village to village, slept in hayricks and barns, had as many escapes as one of Marryat’s romancers, and finally succeeded in crossing the Dutch frontier long after all hope of them had been abandoned. That sort of thing can hardly occur now – yet it is indisputable that miracles do happen.

Let us suppose, however, that the C.O. discovers nothing. Immediately upon that our own department for dealing with the missing comes into action, and the most patient enquiries are made. The British red Cross is informed and investigations are made in all hospitals, also in those of the French Red Cross – and, naturally, at our bases. Nothing is more surprising than the way in which a wounded man will drift sometimes away from his unit. He may hardly know what he is doing at the time, may crawl from crater to crater, lie there for hours, and then sleep the sleep of utter exhaustion. In the end some roving ambulance will pick him up, and he will be carried to a base where some days may pass before he is discovered.

Generally speaking, despite all our care, it is usually from Germany that we get first tidings of our missing. They appear to be encouraged to write to us, and although letters may come slowly from prisoners in the occupied territories we commonly have tidings from their base prisons or hospitals within three months of the capture of any particular man.

And these tidings are written by the man himself – a concession that has been wrung from the fact of numbers- so many more Germans are now held by us than British prisoners by Germans. They are treating our poor follows better just because they fear to treat them worse. And anxiety concerning a missing man is not less poignant in the land of the Hun than in this country.

To be continued

[liverpool annie]

continued ....

So we may put it briefly that the steps for tracing the whereabouts of our possible prisoner are these:
The officer commanding the unit, before making his report, ascertains as far as possible from the officer and men present with the unit whether any reliable evidence is forthcoming. If not, he reports the soldier as missing.
In that case, lists of the missing are supplied by the War Office to the Inquiry Department of the Red Cross at 18, Carlton House-terrace. The representatives of this body are given facilities at the hospitals and camps at home and overseas to collect information from wounded soldiers.
Information so collected, if likely to establish the fate of officer or man, is passed to the War office, and in the case of the rank and file is taken up officially without request from the relatives.
In the case of officers, these reports, if sufficiently definitive, are also investigated, but the initiative is, as a rule, left to the relatives, since the Red Cross reports are frequently numerous and conflicting, and it is found that the relatives have in many cases received more reliable information direct from the officers of the unit.
There remain the enquiries made in Germany, to which end full lists of the missing are prepared at the War Office, and a large number of copies are sent monthly to the Foreign Office for transmission through the good offices of the Netherlands Government to Germany and to other enemy countries. These lists are circulated through the prisoner-of-war camps and the hospitals, and by this means in an appreciable number of cases information has been received showing what has been the fate of the missing.

Let me add that death is not presumed in the cae of an officer until six months have passed, not in the case of a private for seven months. Until that period has elapsed there is always a chance that the missing many may be somewhere in Germany, overlooked in an obscure camp, his letter lost perhaps, or even that official callousness may have denied him the opportunity of writing. Such cases were frequent enough in the old days and terrible have been the experience of those who stood upon the borders of No Man’s Land when the war was young.

I think of Lord Killanin and that heroic quest of the body of one of the finest soldiers that ever served his country, the late Colonel Morris. He fell, as we know, with many of the 4th Guards at Villers-Cotterets in the disastrous retreat from Mons. For weeks his brother sought news of him until one day, riding through the wood by the village the party saw, scribbled in chalk upon a tree, the German intimation that 38 British soldiers were buried there. Investigation proved that not 38, but more than 90 of our brave fellows had been buried in this pit, and at the very bottom were the bodies of Colonel Morris, of young George Cecil, and two other officers of that splendid company - all now at rest in the little cemetery of the hamlet.

But one of ten thousand cases! And who would dwell upon that agony of doubt which has afflicted so many of our people during the days of Armageddon? The hope, the uncertainty, the blind quest of facts, the growing conviction that death was the inevitable answer – these things have been known and suffered in the great silence which awaits the voice of victory.

Now we are doing better for these brave souls, and Germany is helping us. Shen is afraid to do anything else. We hold large numbers of her prisoners, and in Germany, no less than here, are the doubts and the prayers and the unceasing questions. We hear of our men with reasonable dispatch, and the best or worst is often made known before many weeks have passed

[Barbara.H]

Great stuff Annie, thanks! 

death is not presumed in the cae of an officer until six months have passed, not in the case of a private for seven months

looks like the answer

  Barbara

[janan]

Hi Barbara

Have you already seen this?

http://www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_details.aspx?casualty=802762

Jan

[Barbara.H]

Yes thanks Jan! (& thanks also to CU via PM)

It was the description on the CWGC listing of parents 'the late David and Mrs E McGibbon' that started me wondering about this, as it happens.  As well as finding MPD on the medal card.
David died 1919 and Elizabeth died 1922, so it got me thinking, maybe Douglas wasn't declared officially dead until after 1922.

  Barbara

[janan]

That would as you say be so sad if they died still hoping he might return

This was the case for  my father in law's parents though not for the same reason - he ran away from home. We didn't discover this till after his death, I find it so heart wrenching to think of them.

Jan

[suegill]

My Uncle was killed 1/7/1916.  On his service record it says.

1/7/16 Missing
8/7/16 off Battalion
23/5/17 Death accepted

Sue

[Stephen Nulty]

"
My great-uncle's WWI medal roll card has "MPD 29/8/1916".  Missing presumed dead.

[Douglas McGibbon, Pte 17260, 8th Batt South Lancs Regiment]

"

Barbara

His parents will have been advised of the presumption of death no more than about 13 months after he was declared missing. Different regiments had different procedures, but the longest period I have seen before an assumption of death was made was just over a year.

The information contained on the CWGC site will have been supplied by his next of kin on the Final Verification Form completed in about 1924/1925 when the CWGC registers were being collated.

If you visit my web site  at www.prescot-rollofhonour.info and follow the links on the left to the narrative of James Cundill, you'll see some details of the action on the day he was posted missing as Sgt Cundill also served with the 8th and was killed in action that day.

McGibbon's number, 17260, is in a range issued in late 1914.