A British Dampener

[MelPack]

I obviously do not wish to detract from all the good news coming in from Australia but this report rather puts the dampener on it for the British end:

Viable DNA has been obtained from all but about six sets of remains, with testing on samples to continue until 2014. Just three sets of remains of the 250 have been identified as British. Their individual identities have yet to be confirmed.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/private-willis-identified-not-forgotten-20100316-qcl1.html


Mel

[ianw]

If true, this is sad but perhaps not unexpected news.

However, it may be that one or more of the three British sets of remains may be identified in due course.

Of course, a number of the Australians were British by birth so nationality is perhaps not that much of an issue. The large number of names that will finally be engraved at Fromelles is magnificent and a cause for celebration.

[Auimfo]

It must be somewhat disheartening Mel, especially after all the hours yourself and the others have put in researching all the British soldiers. But it's not in vain. Your work has certainly restored the names of these men back to the forefront of our minds and we remember them whether located or not.

Here's hoping that in time the three British soldiers can be identified.

Cheers,

Tim.

[velo350]

I have analysed the details of the report of the men identified from the Pheasant Wood and it actually seems amazing to me that there are any British buried there.

From the report of identified men -

46 men (63%) are from the 8th AIF Brigade

26 men (35%) are from the 14th AIF Brigade

2 men (2%) are from the 15th AIF Brigade

There seem to be a number of typos (1 man named in 22nd Battalion is assumed to be 29th Battalion and 1 man named in 5th Brigade is assumed to be in 15th Brigade)

Considering the location of Pheasant Wood is the closest to where the 8th AIF Brigade attacked and the largest number of idenfified men are from this Brigade, this is a result we should expect to see.

The 14th AIF Brigade attack was the next closest to Pheasant Wood and the second highest number of identified men are from this Brigade.

Thw 15th AIF Brigade attack was the furthest away and they have least identified men.

These results seem to make perfect sense to me. The anomally seems to be the fact that there are any British buried in Pheasant Wood at all!

Any opinions?

Mike B

[topsey1234]

I have analysed the details of the report of the men identified from the Pheasant Wood and it actually seems amazing to me that there are any British buried there.

From the report of identified men -

46 men (63%) are from the 8th AIF Brigade

26 men (35%) are from the 14th AIF Brigade

2 men (2%) are from the 15th AIF Brigade

There seem to be a number of typos (1 man named in 22nd Battalion is assumed to be 29th Battalion and 1 man named in 5th Brigade is assumed to be in 15th Brigade)

Considering the location of Pheasant Wood is the closest to where the 8th AIF Brigade attacked and the largest number of idenfified men are from this Brigade, this is a result we should expect to see.

The 14th AIF Brigade attack was the next closest to Pheasant Wood and the second highest number of identified men are from this Brigade.

Thw 15th AIF Brigade attack was the furthest away and they have least identified men.

These results seem to make perfect sense to me. The anomally seems to be the fact that there are any British buried in Pheasant Wood at all!

Any opinions?

Mike B

I think thats very logical and the other hundreds of missing 61st Division men must be buried in similar circumstances closer to where they fell. The big question is where! Whilst there are still about 44 men still to be identified in the May round of the identification boards I too would be very surprised if any turned out to be British. I think the focus for us with a relative is to move on now, unless some one else turns up key information in the very near future whilst we have all this public interest. They most likely will never be found. We can celebrate the fact their memory is probably now been better kept alive by the intense research that has taken place and the better recording of their lives.

Richard

[Fromelles]

I have analysed the details of the report of the men identified from the Pheasant Wood and it actually seems amazing to me that there are any British buried there.

From the report of identified men -

46 men (63%) are from the 8th AIF Brigade

26 men (35%) are from the 14th AIF Brigade

2 men (2%) are from the 15th AIF Brigade

There seem to be a number of typos (1 man named in 22nd Battalion is assumed to be 29th Battalion and 1 man named in 5th Brigade is assumed to be in 15th Brigade)

Considering the location of Pheasant Wood is the closest to where the 8th AIF Brigade attacked and the largest number of idenfified men are from this Brigade, this is a result we should expect to see.

The 14th AIF Brigade attack was the next closest to Pheasant Wood and the second highest number of identified men are from this Brigade.

Thw 15th AIF Brigade attack was the furthest away and they have least identified men.

These results seem to make perfect sense to me. The anomally seems to be the fact that there are any British buried in Pheasant Wood at all!

Any opinions?

Mike B

Mike,

I think you’re spot on with your assessment of why the British are so few in number. Only the 8th and 14th Brigades managed to get themselves into the German line in any great numbers so they should yield the greater proportion of causalities assessable to the Germans.

The Australian 32nd Battn as part of the 8th Bde and on the very left flank of the battle and closest to Pheasant Wood, had 121 men listed as ‘missing’ who were eventually amended to KIA and have no known grave. Of these only 46 were listed as being found by the Germans (these names are all on the working list) one other (Pte Simon) though not identified by the Germans has been identified by his DNA. This leaves 74 men still “missing” that there is still no knowledge of their whereabouts.

The 32nd Battn who actually got into the German lines and established themselves there and to have so many still unaccounted for it really is no surprise then that the identified British soldiers should be very few in number. The 60th Battn belonging to the 15th Bde and way across at the Sugarloaf, who also had mass casualties but didn’t get into the German line, so far have only positively identified one of their own (Sgt McDowell), and he wasn’t even one of the eight 60th Battn men on the initial working list.

Within the surviving British service records is there any indication that the German found any of them? Bar a very small number this notification from Germany is the prime source in determining which Australians are thought to be at Pheasant Wood.

I’m of the opinion that most of the missing lie where they fell in No Man’s Land and will forever be Known Unto God.

As to the typos, I’m aware of:

• Sgt McDowell - 22nd Battn should read 60th Battalion, he initially started off in the 22nd then transferred

• Cpl Kendall - 5th Bde was in fact 31st Battalion (8th Bde), can't see why this mistake was made

• Pte Pflaum – 31st Battn should read 32nd Battn. (161 Pte RH Pflaum’s records are interesting, 24 Nov 16 is his official date of death.)

There are probably more!

Cheers,

Dan

[ianw]

I find Mike and Dan's analysis very cogent. The Brits were never buried at Pheasant Wood. Their remains are elsewhere. The lack of British remains was accurately predicted in 2008.

[Victoria Burbidge]

I think the focus for us with a relative is to move on now, unless some one else turns up key information in the very near future whilst we have all this public interest. They most likely will never be found. We can celebrate the fact their memory is probably now been better kept alive by the intense research that has taken place and the better recording of their lives.

Mike’s (Guzzi T3) calculations seem to me to be pretty well spot-on. Many of our British men buried by the Germans (identified so far as being Royal Warwicks and MGC) were originally interred within the German Military Cemetery in Fournes. However, whilst there may be a small pocket of burials somewhere behind the old German lines, I believe that the majority of the missing British men will lie either within the local cemeteries or, in one form or another, out on the old battlefield. I am still transcribing the documentation relating to the recovery and re-burial of the many sets of remains and analysing the figures, but certainly with regard to the 89 missing men of the 2/1 Ox & Bucks, the figures speak for themselves.

Rue-du-Bois Military Cemetery offers a tantalising insight into the fate of this battalion, but, unfortunately, the burial returns for this cemetery are no longer extant. However, the CWGC cemetery description tells us that “Plot II, Row A contains two big graves into which, about the time of the Armistice, the remains of soldiers of the 5th Australian Division and the 2nd/1st Bucks Battalion were brought from the battlefield of Fromelles. The number of the dead in these graves is not certain, but it is believed that the Australian grave contains 22 bodies and the Bucks grave 52”.

Another clue as to fate of some of the “missing” men of 61st Division can be found within the diary of CSM Lockwood, 2/5 Glosters:

“… the ground was littered with dead ………. The cleaning up after 19th July was pretty grim. The number of men in No-Man’s Land was very great and July was a very hot month in France in 1916 and after a few days the stench was awful. We could not possibly get all the dead in. We had tried, but a stiff corpse is the most awkward thing to handle especially when he had died in some grotesque position. In any case, only one body could be brought in at a time on a stretcher and of course all our barbed wired had to be negotiated, which in the dark and harassed all the time by German fire, made things very difficult. I sweated on that job for several nights. It was a hopeless task and after about a week the idea was given up. Then somebody had the idea of burning the dead. I suppose the idea had points, but whoever had thought it had forgotten that the dead were not in convenient piles but were scattered from our wire to somewhere half-way over in No Man’s Land. To do any good they had to be dragged together and made into a pile of some sort. I think I liked that job even less than the other one. We took tins of petrol with us and we made one pile to start the cremation. When the first blaze of petrol went up, well, of course the German sentries got curious and sprayed the whole area with gun fire and that was most unpleasant. So, in the end, that was abandoned. Sacks of chloride lime were finally brought into the line and the whole area was doused as much as it was possible to do with that. It did lessen the stench, but that part of the line always remained pretty grim.”

Grim indeed! The truth of the matter lies in CSM Lockwood’s own words “July was a very hot month in France in 1916”. We buried our men in their hundreds up behind the British lines; large trench burials. Not “missing” when they were originally buried, they were rendered “missing” by the circumstances of their burial. Once a man’s identity disc has been removed prior to his burial, there is nothing to identify him when he is exhumed. Even individual burials often fared no better, GRU crosses being destroyed by shell-fire and graves even becoming “lost”.

I am transcribing exhumation and re-burial returns for one Unknown Australian/British Soldier after another. It’s a heart-breaking task which has resulted in me now seeing a difference between “missing” and “no known grave”.

V.