Fromelles: the remains of 400 soldiers to be moved

[Clair]

Les restes de 400 soldats déplacés

(The remains of 400 soldiers moved)

[Ron Avery]

There were two major battles in this area, the first the Battle of Aubers Ridge  was on 9 May 1915, where only a handful of the British casualties of that battle have a known grave.

 

This is an account by a relative of one of the many dead who has been striving to have the first battle properly recognised and commemerated.  Reading the account referenced by Clair, it seems without much success!!  However, there is to be a service of rememberance for those who fell in 1915 this Saturday at Fromelles attended by the families of those who took part.

 

"By May 1915, the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade had been in France for six months. They had already suffered heavy casualties in the March during the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, but nothing would have prepared them for what they were about to experience at Rouges Bancs.
Unlike the pre-war regular soldiers who formed the backbone of this battalion, many of these men had enlisted at the outbreak of war and had travelled out from England, joining the Battalion in mid-March as reinforcements for previous losses.  For these men, this would be their first taste of action. 

Whilst the officers knew their exact whereabouts, the majority of the men believed themselves to be elsewhere and when relatives received letters from comrades telling them of the fighting and where it had taken place, they had no reason to question it.  For eighty-five years some families believed that their loved ones had been killed not at Rouges-Bancs but at Hill 60 on the Ypres Salient.

The Battalion’s casualties that day were the worst that it was to experience for any single action throughout the whole of the Great War. Fifteen officers and two hundred and forty-eight were men killed. Of this number, only two officers and fourteen men have known graves, the rest being listed on the Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing. Of the hundreds of wounded men, many would die from their wounds over the days and weeks to come".

The second battle here in 1916 overshadowed that of the first as it was the first involving Australian troops and they encountered similarly horrendous casualties as those of the 2nd Battalion of the Rifle Brigade a year earlier.

[Clair]

Two websites worth looking at:

• http://www.asbf14-18.org/uk_entree.html
• http://www.cwgc.org/fromelles/ (very busy site, as it has just been mentioned on the BBC News)

[Pierre ZFP]

There's been an update on the DNA tests taken on the remains of the soldiers.  It seems that only 3 of them can be positively identified from relative's DNA.  A pity but it goes to show that real life ain't like television.

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8572381.stm