Missing in action Memorial to the Missing of the Somme in France bears the names of 72,090 British and Commonwealth combatants, all of whom went missing in action during the Battle of the Somme, were never found and who have no known grave. Similarly, the Menin Gate memorial in Belgium commemorates 54,896 missing Allied combatants who are known to have been killed in the Ypres Salient. The Douaumont ossuary, meanwhile, contains 130,000 unidentifiable sets of French and German remains from the Battle of Verdun. Even in the 21st century, the remains of missing combatants are recovered from the former battlefields of the Western
Military history of New Zealand during World War I War Graves Commission (CWGC) cemeteries with other allied soldiers. Gallipoli dead are buried in 24 CWGC cemeteries in Turkey, and in CWGC cemeteries in Egypt, Gibraltar, Greece and Malta. There are memorials to the New Zealand missing on Chunuk Bair and at three CWGC cemeteries: Hill 60 Cemetery, Lone Pine Cemetery and Twelve Tree Copse Cemetery. On the Western Front missing New Zealand soldiers are commemorated in cemeteries near where they were lost rather than at the large memorials of Menin Gate and the Thiepval Memorial on the Somme. The New Zealand monuments to the missing are at Messines in