Identified Anzac Diggers to be laid to rest in France

THE remains of two Melbourne Diggers identified through DNA family matches will be given full military funerals and dignified burials in France, 100 years after the guns fell silent on the Western Front.

A CENTURY after the guns fell silent on the Western Front, the remains of two Diggers identified through DNA family matches will be given full military funerals and dignified burials in France.

Private Hedley Roy MacBeth, of Kensington and Lance Corporal James Leonard Rolls, of Prahran, were killed by an almost direct hit from an artillery shell at Bullecourt on May 3, 1917 and the location of their resting place remained unknown for 100 years.

Robert MacBeth, who provided a DNA sample in June which positively identified his great grandfather, said the discovery offered the family immense comfort and pride.

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Private Hedley Roy MacBeth. Picture: Supplied

Lance Corporal James Leonard Rolls. Picture: Supplied

“It was a huge relief to the family to finally find out what actually happened and where he was,” Mr MacBeth said.

“We are very proud of him and his legacy, he was with his mates (when he died) and to let him rest with his comrades is great. He is my hero, those guys are the reason we have the life we have today in this country.”

The remains of the two soldiers were discovered in 2015 and then exhumed from the site of an old railway embankment where the 23rd and 24th Battalions of the Army Imperial Force were located in the second battle of Bullecourt, in May 1917.

The Australian Army’s Unrecovered War Casualties Team, together with a group volunteer scientists and researchers then spent the next three years consulting Red Cross records, conducting anthropological and dental assessments and then positive DNA matches to formally identify the men in August.

“It is fitting to acknowledge, as these men are buried 100 years and one day after the end of the war, that the impact of the conflict has not ended,” the Army’s Unrecovered War Casualties Team manager Andrew Bernie said.

“The reverence we afford to human remains of our casualties is a key part of respect in the Australian Army. Our missing soldiers provide a visceral link to our past, the men who shaped in many ways, what the Australian Army has now become.”

Vivian Bullwinkel (third from left), matron of Fairfield Hospital, the sole survivor of the Banku Island massacre of Australian nurses in 1942.

Artefacts found with Pte MacBeth and Lance-Corp Rolls, which also helped in identification, included Australian uniform fragments, buttons and boots, pencils, bayonets, helmets, ammunition, spoons, components of a gas mask, a pen knife and a matchbox.

Of the more than 60,000 Australians killed in World War I, about 20,000 still have no known grave, including about 12,000 casualties in France and 6,000 in Belgium.

The war was Australia’s most deadly and the Australian Defence Force is committed to identifying soldiers’ remains wherever possible.

Pte MacBeth, 31, and Lance-Corp Rolls, 24, will be buried side-by-side with full military honours the day after Remembrance Day, on November 12 at Queant Road Military Cemetery, France.

Robert MacBeth and other family members will attend, together with Governor General Sir Peter Cosgrove and Defence Personnel Minister Darren Chester.