SCIENCE WEEK:MODERN FORENSICS has helped identify soldiers from the first World War buried in mass unmarked graves. Discovered through the "tenacity" of an Australian schoolteacher, the work has brought closure to families whose relatives went missing during the war.
Prof Margaret Cox is the scientific adviser to the UK and Australian governments for the Fromelles Project. Started three years ago after the discovery of the graves near the village of Fromelles in northern France, the project seeks to identify as many of the 250 soldiers found there as possible, she said.
Prof Cox delivered a talk entitled “The Lost Soldiers of Fromelles” yesterday evening at the Institute of Technology Sligo as part of its Science Week activities. Her team have so far managed to identify 110 of the 250 found, all of them Australian soldiers, she explained.
Prof Cox recently retired as professor of forensic archaeology and anthropology at Cranfield University. She directed the forensic analysis of the grave site, its excavation and the collection of information about the remains.
A key part of the work was the recovery and analysis of DNA from the soldiers’ teeth.
The Battle of Fromelles took place on July 19th, 1916, even as the Battle of the Somme was raging 80km to the south. Those dying behind German lines at Fromelles were subsequently buried but reported as missing.
The discovery of the grave site was a story in itself, she said ahead of her talk. “They were discovered by the tenacity of a retired Australian teacher,” she said. He had spent years poring over old documents and aerial photographs from the region in the belief that at least some of the 2,000 who went missing in battles around Fromelles might have been buried there. He finally located the site by analysing old aerial photographs from 1920-21.
Once discovered, funding was provided to begin the process of exhumation and identification before reburial in a new graveyard outside Fromelles, the first to be opened since the end of the first World War, Prof Cox said.
Personal effects were found that assisted identification, she said. One soldier had a signet ring engraved: “Love from Aunt Julie 1915”, and documents confirmed the ring’s owner and his identity.
Others revealed the hopes of those fighting in the battle. “We found a return train ticket tucked inside a gas mask,” she said, suggesting the soldier was confident of returning home.
The work will continue until 2014 when funding runs out, but the DNA evidence will continue to aid the identification process as people come forward in the hopes of reconnecting with a lost relative, she said.