Fromelles descendants meet at the Museum

September 8, 2009

As work continues today on excavating the site of the biggest World War One mass grave discovered in decades, a team from the Historic Casualty Team based at the Imjin Barracks, Innsworth, Gloucestershire are trying to track down relatives of the fallen.

The appeal is for people who may be related to the soldiers who fell at Fromelles to get in touch so they can cross-match DNA and hopefully identify any remains they discover.

Two groups of descendants met at The Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum and were briefed by the team and museum staff about the re-burial arrangements and the circumstances of battle itself.

Fromelles was intended to be a diversionary attack to prevent the Germans from sending reinforcements to the Battle of the Somme, which was already in its nineteenth day, 50 miles to the south west.

The battle involved two allied infantry divisions, the 5th Australian and British 61st , South Midland, including the 2/4th Gloucesters, 2/6th Gloucesters and 2/5th Gloucesters.

Both divisions had been in France for only a few weeks, with little real experience of combat there. Although some of the Australians had fought in Gallipoli, it was to be their first taste of fighting on the Western Front.

The battle was to become an example of ‘what not to do’: a daylight attack by inexperienced troops, following bad intelligence and muddled planning, with rushed preparation and insufficient artillery support.

In the early evening of July 19th, 1916, the Australian troops attacked a 1,800 yard section of the German line, whilst, on their right, the British attacked south east, on a 2000 yard front.

The German defences, supported by artillery, were well prepared and heavily fortified, with a central strong-point, the Sugar Loaf, which lay devastating machine-gun fire on both attacks. In spite of terrible losses, some groups did break into the German lines, but, without support and short of ammunition, they could not hold out and were forced to withdraw.

In one night, the Australians saw 5,533 men killed, wounded or missing, while the British suffered 1,547 casualties. German casualties amounted to 1,582.

Afterwards the British tried to down-play the attack as just a raid, but it gave a boost to German morale including that of Corporal Adolf Hitler, who took part in the battle. Fromelles also failed to have any effect on German troop movements to the Somme.