Much has been reported on mainstream TV news recently about the work at Fromelles.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website reports that, in May 2008, after several years of painstaking research and investigation, five burial pits dating from the First World War were identified at Pheasant Wood, near Fromelles in northern France. The pits, which have lain undisturbed for more than 90 years, are believed to contain the remains of between 250 and 400 British and Australian soldiers, buried behind German lines after the Battle of Fromelles in July 1916.
The British and Australian governments have asked the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to oversee the operation to recover the remains and to create a new military cemetery at Fromelles for their reburial. The work began this month (May 2009) and will be completed by July 2010.
We have also been sent a poem inspired by the workof the CWGC at Fromelles:
Today in a field in Fromelles, France forensic scientists are disinterring the bodies of fallen heroes of The Great War, and I wrote these lines to commemorate this extraordinary event
Exhumus
Exhumator, ceremoniously you waken us
Gone so long, back in World War One
Sorrow, yes, but no forced air of solemnity
Take us up gently bones of the unreturning,
Doomed but valiant knaves
Shelled hideously, intermingled in French mud.
Probe for mates, collate and light us
Twenty first century, DNA and type me
Photo, blog and net me
Kith and kin trace and verify me
Name, claim and honour my youth
Forget not, why we came here, back in World War One
Exhumator, when you’ve done,
Go against your trade and reinterre me.
By A. Kemp
May 2009.
