The suspicion has been circulating for years that many soldiers who died in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 were subsequently dug up and processed into fertilizer. Now an archaeologist wants to know more about it.
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Jacob Wetzel
The smoke from the guns had barely cleared when the first British tourists were already running across the Waterloo battlefield. And they were obviously impressed. They reported of mountains of dead and countless wounded, of hastily piled pyres, but also of overflowing mass graves. Later visitors noted body parts sticking out of the fields and wrote of the repulsive stench.