World War I casualties are reburied

FROMELLES, France – The remains of a World War I soldier left in a mass grave for more than 90 years were moved by four-horse cart to a new cemetery for reburial with full honors Monday in a ceremony attended by Prince Charles.

The unknown soldier's new headstone in northern France bears a simple inscription: "A soldier of the Great War. Known unto God." His nationality is unclear, but he was either Australian or British.

German machine guns and artillery left more than 5,500 Australians and more than 1,500 British killed, wounded or missing in under 24 hours at the 1916 Battle of Fromelles, the first Australian combat operation on the Western Front.

Many of the dead were buried by Germans in a mass grave, which was covered by plants over time and discovered by an Australian amateur historian in 2008.

After more than two years of exhumation and identification work by archaeologists, 249 of the bodies were reburied under marble gravestones laid out in a V shape in a new cemetery in the French town of Fromelles.

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