Remember Me To All by Loe, Barker, Brady, Cox, and Webb

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This is the Archaeological Monograph of the recovery and identification of a group of soldiers who fought in the Battle of Fromelles in 1916. As such it is a formal and academic publication rather than a “popular” account.

The application of Archaeological methods to what is in Archaeological term a recent set of remains is interesting, as it the ways that techniques used in the recovery of mass graves as part of investigations of war crimes are applied to what is from that sphere a more historic setting.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect is that the project was undertaken at all – it is made very clear that the primary aim is to provide identification before reburial (in a newly created war cemetery) of as many of the soldiers as possible. And other historical or archaeological research goals are only addressed to the extent that relevant information is provided by this primary aim.

But why 90 years after the battle did the Australian Army feel the need to expend such resources on the identification – all those involved would have been presumed dead, (for most the Germans had collected identifying articles from the fallen soldiers at the time, therefore their death had been confirmed even if their bodies had not been located at again at the end of the war) - what was the benefit this late in the day of providing a new burial?

It is clear that although in many ways distant the First World War remains present – the Centenary has brought it to the forefront of many minds, but it was never really that far from our thoughts. There must now be few sons and daughters of the Fallen, but there are still relations who are conscious of a loss – and perhaps the feeling of loss endures all the more for those who mourned one whose body was not found. For the Australian families even of those who had an identified grave the idea of visiting it must until the last couple of decades have been remote – yet was there a comfort in knowing it was there, a comfort denied those for whom there was no grave.

And so fresh graves and restored identifies were provided.

One of the oddities, given the project was all about identification, was that this monograph treats all the findings with anonymity – in part because the process of formal confirmation of the identities was ongoing at the time of writing, but also because there seemed to be the application of the same standards of confidentiality to the medical histories of the soldiers as would be afforded to a living individual.