British war dead exhumed 94 years on

[bdk]

British war dead exhumed 94 years on

FROMELLES, France (AFP) – Soldiers' relatives, officials and French villagers Tuesday marked the launch of an operation to recover hundreds of fallen British and Australian troops from a World War I mass grave.

Military top brass gathered with British, Australian and French dignitaries on a patch of land near the northern French village of Fromelles, for a formal blessing of the site at the start of a five-month dig.

"Today marks the beginning of the journey to afford many of those killed at Fromelles with a fitting and dignified final place of rest," said Admiral Sir Ian Garnett, vice chairman of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Archaeologists and forensics experts hope to recover the bodies of up to 400 servicemen from Pheasants Wood outside Fromelles, today a tranquil red brick hamlet near what was once the World War I front line.

Genetic tests will hopefully allow some of the men to be identified, and all will be given a full military funeral, 94 years after they lost their lives in a doomed assault on German lines, on July 19, 1916.

"They are lying so far away from home. It's wonderful they are finally being given the honour due to them," said Robert Witt, a 64-year-old pilgrim from Sydney whose two great uncles fought on the Western Front.

"I feel humble that they gave their lives so many miles from their homeland. I just hope we can find and identify as many possible," he added.

"The fallen who are buried here will at last be recognised for their service," added Chris Munro, 55, a Sydney schoolteacher who leads a 350-strong group of families and friends of the Australian World War I troops.

Alongside the relatives, locals and a flag-bearing honour guard, Britain's junior defence minister Quentin Davies and Australia's ambassador to France David Ritchie also paid their respects to the men.

"This is tremendously significant," the ambassador told reporters after the ceremony. "It's an important part of the history of our nation which will be commemorated here. It's a great lesson."

"Whether a soldier dies tomorrow, or died 100 years ago, if we can recover their remains and bury them with honour, then we do it," added Australian army General Mike O'Brien.

After a religious blessing of the site, an earthmover rolled back a symbolic strip of topsoil, exposing clay pits where experts will spend the next five months painstakingly recovering each soldier's body.

The team includes forensic anthropologists and scientists, with expertise ranging from Roman digs to the Srebrenica war crimes investigation in Bosnia, along with an ordnance officer to deal with any unexploded munitions.

Between 250 and 400 Australians and Britons slain in the Battle of Fromelles are thought to have been buried by German forces, without name tags, in five separate pits in Pheasants Wood.

Test digs ordered by the Australian army in 2007 and 2008 revealed human remains, along with buttons from military underwear, in what is thought to be the largest unmarked Allied war grave found since the 1918 Armistice.

Since the site was identified four years ago, thanks to an Australian amateur historian, hundreds of wellwishers have visited the sleepy village west of the city of Lille.

From July 19 next year, the anniversary of the battle, they will be greeted by a new Commonwealth war cemetery, built on land donated by the French state.

The remains will be reburied initially as unknown soldiers, each with a headstone and a British or Australian military badge where identifiable from scraps of uniform or equipment.

Then the mammoth task will begin to link the soldiers' genetic profiles with living relatives, cross-referenced with military and family records, and clues such as facial features or signs of childhood illness.

The first major clash on the Western front involving Australian troops, the Battle of Fromelles was intended to divert German troops from the Battle of the Somme, but ended in bloody failure.

Allied troops were ordered to advance in clear view of the enemy. Some 5,553 Australian and 1,547 British soldiers died, were wounded or went missing, the worst loss for the Australian Imperial Force in a 24-hour period.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090505/wl_uk_afp/francebritainaustraliahistorywwi_20090505140948

[Oscar Duck]

Search for Fromelles soldiers ends

PAOLA TOTARO IN LONDON
September 10, 2009


The dig at Fromelles has finally ended with just 250 bodies – not 400 - found and exhumed from the field beside Pheasant Wood in northern France.

The four-month excavation has officially wrapped up and the English archaeological team that led the recovery will finish on site at the weekend, paving the way for the remains of the World War I soldiers, now believed to be mostly Australian, to be reburied.

Burials, with full military honours, are to be held on every second day, for a month from January 30 next year to the end of February.

The men will be given individual, unmarked headstones unless their identities can be ascertained through DNA testing.

Members of the public will be able to visit the site during the funerals and view the proceedings from a special area.

The 250 soldiers, killed in the Battle of Fromelles that began on July 19, 1916, were the first to fight in an operation that involved both British and Australian troops.

They were buried in eight pits, dug by German soldiers.

In total, 1547 men from the 61st British Division were lost, wounded or went missing while the 5th Australian Division suffered 5533 losses.The men are to be reburied in a new military cemetery at Fromelles, under construction by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

DNA samples taken from their bodies are being worked on by a British laboratory in a bid to extract viable strands for testing against descendants and relatives.

It has been confirmed that the identification is likely to take many more months as work continues behind the scenes to establish genealogies and identify appropriate descendants.

All the material found on site is to be presented to a specially convened identification board which is due to meet in March next year.

The British Minister for Veterans , Kevan Jones, said the end of the dig represented a milestone in the development of the project.

“I am grateful for the work that Oxford Archaeology has done," he said.

"I know they have been working in very tough conditions and they have recovered the remains of these brave soldiers with the utmost care and respect.

“Now we will do everything we can to try to identify each and every one of these fallen soldiers. What is most important is that these men are laid to rest with full military honours and the dignity they deserve.”

The Minister for Defence Personnel, Greg Combet, said: “A total of 250 sets of remains and 1200 artefacts have been excavated from six graves. While identification of the remains is an extremely complex process I remain hopeful that we will be able to identify a number of those that we have found.”

The whereabouts of the mass grave was officially confirmed in May 2008 after years of research by Melbourne amateur historian Lambis Englezos who pinpointed the exact location alongside Pheasant Wood, on Fromelles' outskirts.


RIP

[Iclo]

Today, in Fromelles, the first soldiers exhumed last year were buried in a new cemetary.
The idenfication are still pending, but when the soldiers will be identified, each grave will receive a "named" stone.

RIP old warriors fallend so far their home...

[JDK]

Thanks Iclo. A couple of news items:

WWI war dead reburied in special service

Relatives of identified solidiers can add a personalised inscription on the grave

The first of 250 British and Australian soldiers whose remains were recovered from a World War I battlefield in northern France are set to be reburied.

The soldiers, who died in the 1916 Battle of Fromelles, will be reburied with full military honours in a special service at a cemetery near the site.

It is the first Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery built in 50 years.


The remains of Private John Smith were recovered from the mass grave

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8488863.stm

Hilltop plan may honour France's fallen diggers
PAOLA TOTARO, LONDON
January 30, 2010

THE summit of a hill in northern France - the theatre of what British general Henry Rawlinson described as ''the greatest military achievement of the Great War'' - is being considered for a new Australian military memorial and visitor centre.

The proposal to buy Mont St Quentin near the village of Pronne, together with a tiny, abandoned church just below, has emerged just before the first ceremonial reburial of the 240 or so diggers lost for 90 years in a mass grave in nearby Fromelles.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/hillt ... -n46t.html

[The Inspector]

JDK,
Lets hope that memorial site becomes a reality, everyone of those fellows deserves some wide spread recognition and honor-