Around the Commonwealth: Bones uncovered from WWI mass grave

“We have to be very careful to remove the clay off the remains – it is sticky and tenacious, so you have got to clean it off very slowly,” explains Dr Louise Loe, head of Heritage Burial Services at Oxford Archaeology, an archaeological firm charged with the somewhat gruesome task of recovering remains from a mass grave in north-eastern France.

“Digging in clay, particularly when it is wet, is probably the hardest type of dig you can do,” she notes, reflecting on the effects of rainfall and wind in recent days.

Dr Loe and her team of anthropologists and archaeologists - veterans of mass grave digs in the Balkans, Cyprus and elsewhere - are slowly trying to tease from the ground the recently discovered remains of up to 400 Australian and British soldiers killed at the First World War Battle of Fromelles in July 1916.

The recovery operation at Pheasant Wood, just a few hundred metres from the Fromelles village where the fallen soldiers were dumped after battle, is being managed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission with support from the Australian and British governments as well as French local authorities.

Ground zero is marked out by a temporary fence, some tents and a series of containers and a makeshift mortuary. From here the team of 30 carefully locate, extract and examine the bones and artefacts.

Hundreds of war dead

Summer was set as the time for the dig in a bid to avoid the ravages of a cold, wet winter. But the team has had a torrid time of it since they began the dig earlier this month with gusty winds and rain battering the encampment. “The fence has just blown down,” Dr Loe points out rather matter-of-factly, revealing just a hint of exasperation with the unseasonal misfortune.

Fortunately, her team is well prepared, with sandbags situated around the tents and gullies dug into the perimeter of the excavation sites. “We have got all sorts of strategies in place. The most important thing is to stop rain from getting in and not draining away,” says Dr Loe. “It’s working and I’m confident that we will complete the work on time.”

Dr Loe and her team have until September to retrieve the remains from the ground. Once recovered, they will, where possible, be identified and then laid to rest in a newly-built cemetery planned for just a few metres away.

In the bloody history of the First World War, Fromelles has been somewhat “overshadowed” in the eyes of the British public by the more deadly Battle of the Somme, explains Peter Francis, spokesman for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

But for Australians, who lost more than 5,000 soldiers during the fighting, the Battle of Fromelles retains a special place in the country’s national identity. “It was the first time that Australian troops were fighting on the Western front and their losses were so catastrophic the battle of Fromelles has taken on a great importance in Australian history - social and military.”

Newly-built cemetery

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains war graves at 23,000 locations in 150 countries around the world. But this is the first time in nearly 50 years that the commission has built a new cemetery.

“Initially [the skeletons] will all be buried as unknowns,” Mr Francis explains. “Then an identification panel will meet in March to determine whether we can name any of the individuals. If they can, then obviously next of kin are contacted and we have to manufacture the appropriate headstones. So we’ve got quite a tight time period.”

“One of the wonderful things working for the Commission,” says Mr Francis, “is the families you get to meet, the veterans and the young people. When we launched our dedicated Fromelles website [www.fromelles.org] we put a blog mechanism on it and hundreds and thousands of people have said how much [the recovery] means to them and their families.”

“On days when you’re dealing with blown-down fences and pouring rain, those are the sorts of comments that make you realise you how important this project is – not only for the men buried at Pheasant Wood but also their families back in Australia and the UK.”

Unsurprisingly there is a hope among many of the families that individual soldiers might be identified. Any fragment of information – the smallest artefact, such as a wedding ring or button – that is found might help identify a missing soldier and prove of enormous comfort to those who, until the discovery of the site just a few years ago, had lost hope of tracing their relatives.

Emotional journey

"We're looking for any associated artefacts or military paraphernalia,” says Dr Loe. “It would be fantastic if we found a letter or a dog tag,” she says.

DNA evidence however is hard to come by, and can in any case be far from conclusive, says Dr Loe. “We don’t know if DNA has survived in these remains. It is very fragile and very sensitive to ground conditions. A very wet environment like this is in some instances not a good environment for its preservation.”

Acknowledging the limits of their ability to identify the soldiers, Dr Loe and her team remain focused on the main job in hand. “If in getting the remains ready for burials we find we can say whether they are Australian or British or even find their name that is a bonus. That is fantastic. But the primary aim is to give them a decent burial.”

“Our sole aim for the project is to recover the remains in a timely and sensitive manner, maintaining respect for the dead at all times and so we can give them individual burials in the Commission’s cemetery,” she says.

Aside from the weather conditions, perhaps the most challenging aspect of the dig is dealing with the emotional aspects of it. “We have all been touched by the enormity of the sacrifice of these individuals,” she says. “This is a bit of an emotional journey for us so there will be times when we find it difficult.”

“But we’re also very focused on the ultimate goal, which is to give these individuals their own burials, which they so rightly deserve.”

http://www.cwgc.org/fromelles/

Related News:

• Commonwealth War Graves Commission