Two Australian WWI soldiers laid to rest in France

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Cosgrove delivers a speech at the Queant Road cemetary during the burial of two soldiers belonging to the 24th Australian Imperial Force infantry battalion killed during World War I in Buissy, Northern France, as nations commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armistace of Nov 11, 1918. — AFP photo

BUISSY, France: Two Australian soldiers, killed over 100 years ago during World War I, were finally laid to rest in northern France on Monday as relatives stood by.

“He’s not an unknown soldier anymore, we know where he is,” said Robert MacBeth, 36, from Ballan, in Australia’s Victoria state, speaking of his great grandfather.

Private Hedley Roy MacBeth, aged 31, and acting corporal James Leonard Rolls, aged 23, were killed in May 1917 during the second battle of Bullecourt.

British and Australian troops managed to push back German lines during a week-long offensive which left 7,000 dead in the allied ranks.

“We are very happy, it’s very emotional that we’re finally burying him with full military honours and that he has been put safely to rest here in France,” Irene Darby, Rolls’ great niece, told AFP at the ceremony led by Australia’s Governor-General Peter Cosgrove at the Qu ant Road Cemetery, near Buissy.

The bodies of the two soldiers from the Australian Imperial Force’s 24th infantry battalion were discovered by a disused railway track on May 23 May, 2015.

They were formally identified in August this year thanks to DNA testing of their relatives.

The two men were in a trench near the railway line when an artillery shell exploded nearby, according to army archives.

They will now rest alongside some 2,400 Commonwealth and German soldiers in the cemetery run by the Commonwealth war graves commission.

“The family always knew about James, he was spoken about at every Anzac Day,” Darby said.

“We can now say we found him and we can come and visit him now, we know where he is,” she added.

Almost 62,000 Australian soldiers were killed during WWI.

Historians believe the bodies of 700,000 of the 3.5 million soldiers killed on the Western Front are still missing. — AFP