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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

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

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.