What do you think about the excavation at Fromelles? Leave your thoughts below.
There's no shortage of sacred places and extraordinary stories on the Western Front. A new one has just been added though and, for Australians, it should hit very close to home.
It's a story of extraordinary bravery, appalling cover-up and moving redemption for all of us.
The Battle of Fromelles in June 1916 was a blow our young, small nation simply couldn't handle. Coming as it did just months after the disaster of Gallipoli, the appalling losses were airbrushed from contemporary news reports and, in large part, from Australia's military history.
On the evening of July 19, 1916 the Australian and British troops were sent into a suicidal assault against the Germans at Fromelles. It was intended as a diversion. It was hoped the enemy would be forced to move valuable personnel to the tiny village, while another attack was launched further down the line on the Somme.
In the end it was a generals' folly; a horrific slaughter. More than 2000 Australians were lost in just 24 hours. Consider this: in just one, day more Australians were lost at Fromelles than died in the Boer, Korean and Vietnam wars combined. It is possibly one of the most tragic statistics one could possibly imagine.
It was just too much. The press reports were censored. The disgrace of the Fromelles campaign came to be ignored. Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance doesn’t record it.
Last month, the Australian government finally held its first, long-overdue dawn service on the Western Front. It's the site of our main French memorial. A huge wall records the names of the 11,000 Australians who died in WW1 but who lie in unknown graves. Inscribed across the top of the wall are the names of the towns where the Australians saw action: Posieres, Passchandaele, Ypres.
The name Fromelles is conspicuously — disgracefully — absent.
Against this background has emerged a remarkable post script. That hellish night 400 men — 170 Australians and 230 Britons — made it across no man's land to the German lines. All perished. The Germans, to their credit, gathered the dead and buried them in mass graves under the shadow of Fromelles’s church. Before they did so, they removed the identification tags, recorded the names of the dead and sent the tags back to Australia.
And they were never heard of again, neglected by the authorities, forgotten by their countrymen.
Skip forward to 2002. Lambis Englezos is a Melbourne school teacher and amateur historian. He's a war buff. Through his reverential contact with surviving soldiers he heard the story of the forgotten diggers of Fromelles and decided to act.
For decades nothing had been done but Lambis sought out Red Cross records, German files and aerial photographs from before and after the battle showing a number of pits had been dug and then covered up. He was sure he’d found the spot where the missing diggers were buried.
Through an extraordinary effort of will, Lambis lobbied, cajoled and harassed government and media to press his cause. My colleagues in Nine's Melbourne newsroom remember taking calls from this apparent madman raving about a lost grave, the forgotten soldiers and his conviction that he'd found them.
Somehow, he pulled it off. An unlikely coalition of descendants, military buffs and journalists gradually formed around Lambis until he could be ignored no longer.
Yesterday the tireless research and shameless pleading of this unlikely champion came to fruition. An official dig uncovered a skeletal forearm in exactly the area Lambis had pinpointed as a mass Australian grave.
Tim Whitford is also here. His great uncle Harry Willis is thought to be in this mass grave. He enlisted at the age of 19 after he received a feather in the mail — WWI's shameful, anonymous accusation of cowardice. Harry succumbed and just months later he was dead. Shot in the face, he died a slow and painful death. Tim himself served 14 years in Australia’s armed forces and he’s never forgotten Uncle Harry.
I've been following the Fromelles story for the past year. It's been my privilege to deal with Lambis Englezos and be overtaken by his passion for the missing diggers.
When the announcement came yesterday that remains had been found it happened in Canberra. It was after midnight in France and not one official did Lambis and Tim the courtesy of calling them to tell them. The bureaucratic disgrace of Fromelles continues.
Stepping out onto the site in daylight I spotted Lambis for the first time since he’d been told of his vindication.
I could make all sorts of brave assertions about journos being impartial, hard bastards unmoved by any story after enough years of covering all sorts of them. But when I was standing in front of Lambis to interview him words — and composure — simply failed me. All I could manage to choke out was, "I simply don't know what to say to you." Lambis confessed that the
60 Minutes crew here had made him cry and laughingly told me he would not do the same for me. In the end, it was the other way round.
Soon after, Tim told me that his Uncle Harry's name is missing from the Fromelles memorial because of an administrative oversight. As if being buried in an unknown grave no one cared about for 90 years wasn't enough. That was pretty much it for me. Any veneer of toughness gave way completely.
It's not yet clear how this will finish up. The battlefield archaeologists continue the dig. They're still a long way from confirming how many soldiers are buried in the pits. Once they do know, what's to be done with them? Lambis and Tim want them identified and given their own graves and headstones. Other descendants feel strongly they should be left where they are. It will come down to the will and deep pockets of the Australian and British governments.
Many Australians know a little bit about the battles of the Western Front. Not nearly as many as are well versed in the myth of Gallipoli. If you're ever here, though, be sure to make a stop at Fromelles. From here on in, none of us should forget this battle as it has been for too long.
A final post script. The Battle of Fromelles has thrown up many an unlikely story but this one takes the cake. On the German lines battling the Australians that night was a young soldier, Corporal Adolf Hitler. How the history of the world in the 20th Century might have changed if he'd caught a stray Australian bullet that night.
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