‘No people who turn their backs on death can be alive.’[1] In every culture there is some form of intense ceremony surrounding death, grieving for the dead, and disposal of the body. There are thousands of variations, but the point is always to give the community of family and friends left behind the chance to reconcile themselves to the facts of death: the emptiness, the loss, their own transience and, in this case, the uselessness of bloodshed in a world war.
[1]Christopher Alexander, ‘70 Grave Sites’, in: A Pattern Language, Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 354.