Cameron Highlanders Grave,Fromelles,1916.

[ChrisDoak]

Excavations have recently commenced at Pheasant Wood,Fromelles,Northern France,at the mass grave of 400 British and Australian troops buried by the German Army,after the battle there in 1916.It is believed that the fighting resulted in the deaths of 1780 Australian and 504 British soldiers.

Last year,a team of archaeologists from the University of Glasgow uncovered burial pits which had lain untouched since the battle,and exhumation of the bodies is now being carried out under the supervision of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

The bodies will be reburied in a new Cemetery nearby,once identification procedures are carried out - no easy task,as the soldiers'identity tags will not have survuved 90 years under ground.DNA tests will be used to identify as many of the bodies as possible,and efforts are being made to find relatives to provide assistance.

It is believed that approx.20 Scottish soldiers lie in the mass grave - seven who had served with English Regiments,and the rest with only two Scottish ones.These are as follows:

CAMERON HIGHLANDERS:

-Private William Baxter,7th Battalion.(Home-not known).
-Private John Cumming,6th Battalion.(Inverness).
-Private Allan Charles MacLean,6th Battalion.(Lochmaddy,North Uist).
-Private Alexander Loudon,6th Battalion.(Lanarkshire).
-Private Joseph Maguire,6th Battalion.(Glasgow).
-Private Robert Marshall,6th Battalion.(not known).
-Private James D.F. Melvin,7th Battalion.(Abington,Lanarkshire).
-Private Joseph G.Millard,6th Battalion.(Newport).
-Private James Mitchell,7th Battalion.(Coldstream,Berwichshire).
-Private William Robertson,6th Battalion.(Edinburgh).
-Private Peter Stewart,7th Battalion.(not known).
-Lance Corporal George Wallace,7th Battalion.(not known).

CAMERONIANS(SCOTTISH RIFLES):

-Corporal Harry Howison,2nd Battalion.(not known).

The website relating to the present operations at Fromelles (including updated photographs) can be found at www.cwgc.org/fromelles.A full list of the British soldiers believed buried here is also included.

For a full listing of the Australian troops,go to www.defence.gov.au/fromelles.

[Alans]

Many of the Australians were from my home state of Victoria commanded by Colonel Elliot who later as a Brigadier won an important Victory at Villers Bretonneaux in April 1918 during the great German push to the Channel. he learned many lessons from that day and never hesitated to criticise his superiors plans from then on and was occaisonally listened to.
This was the diggers first action in France and many of these men had survived eight hellish months on the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915, only to be sent across open fields in broad daylight against well entrenched machine gunners.
Only a small action in the sweep of the Great War, but one of the saddest days in Australian History. Although over 8000 diggers were to die in the next six weeks around Pozieres, Fromelles was the biggest single loss of life in one day in our History so far.
Apart from the dead there were over 5000 casualties amongst the AIF forces on that day. Many of the diggers were either British born (many of Scots descent) or had parents born in Britain.
God bless them !