The Fromelles Missing: ‘bones, badges, and scraps of uniform’.
The Fromelles Missing: ‘bones, badges, and scraps of uniform’. The Battle of Fromelles occurred in France precisely 108 years ago this week. This photograph of a priest from Fromelles kneeling in front of the remains of a British or Australian soldier was likely taken in early 1919. Australian official historian Charles Bean had stood at this exact location months earlier. Back on the morning the Great War ended, Bean awoke to hear a few hoarse cheers and the bleating of a tin trumpet. ‘I guessed what it meant. The armistice must have been signed. No more gun flashes, no more flares.’ That morning, Bean travelled to Fromelles to take some photographs before the place changed. He wandered the old battlefield, where almost 2,500 soldiers had been slaughtered in a hellish attack in July 1916. ‘We found the old no man’s land simply full of our dead,’ Bean recorded, ‘the skulls and bones and torn uniforms were lying about everywhere.’ Bean explored Sugar Loaf sa...