Fromelles pits yield only nine skeletons

Monday - 9 June 2008 - Australian

AFTER a fortnight of digging at a burial site at Fromelles in France, thought to contain the remains of hundreds of Australian soldiers, archeologists have uncovered fewer than a dozen skeletons.

With a week to go in the three-week exploratory dig at Pheasant Wood, experts have uncovered the remains of nine individuals in the five burial pits under investigation.

None of the remains recovered so far can be positively identified as being of Australian soldiers killed in the battle of Fromelles in July 1916.

It is now increasingly unlikely the Pheasant Wood site will reveal the fate of hundreds of missing Australian and British soldiers who died at Fromelles.

During the battle on the night of July 19-20, 1916, Australian soldiers suffered 5500 casualties -- the heaviest one-day loss incurred by the First AIF.

The excavation, funded by the federal Government, was designed to prove once and for all whether the remains of up to 400 fallen Australian and British soldiers are buried in a small field alongside Pheasant Wood.

Archival evidence suggests the soldiers were buried at the site by German forces following the battle, with some researchers arguing that the mass graves have lain undisturbed since 1916.

The theory is that the remains of Australian and British soldiers were not uncovered by battlefield clearance teams at the end of WWI and may still be buried at the Pheasant Wood site.

The dig, led by the Glasgow University Archaeological Division (GUARD) under the direction of the Australian Army, has found evidence of human remains in all five of the burial pits believed to contain the remains of Australian soldiers.

Archeologists at the dig site say the skeletal remains uncovered to date are in very good condition but with no evidence of soft tissue survival.

"As yet, there is no evidence of previous exhumation and the three pits undergoing excavation have shown compelling evidence for in situ burial," the latest excavation report says.

The dig team says it would be inappropriate to estimate the quantity of human remains at the site until it has collated all the available information.