The Fromelles Association of Australia was calling for help from relatives to identify a Katandra soldier killed and presumed buried in a mass grave at Fromelles in France in 1916.
Private Lemuel Batey — who was just 21 when he was killed in action during the Battle of Fromelles in July 1916 — is possibly one of the last remaining unknown diggers.
The mass grave of Australian soldiers of the 5th Division, discovered in 2007, contained 250 unknown soldiers.
A total of 166 have been officially identified and 84 remain unknown.
Lemuel Reginald Valentine Fitzhawthorn Batey, known as “Lem”, was born in 1895, the son of Thomas and Eliza Ann Batey (nee Ford).
The Fromelles Association was looking for suitable local DNA donors (particularly on his mother’s family line) in the hope that their DNA might identify Lem among the remaining unidentified soldiers buried in the Pheasant Wood Cemetery.
“He was only 21, my grandfather Frank, Lem’s brother, felt that sick and angry about what happened to those poor boys, especially Lem, it took over 18 months for the family to be notified,” Trevor Batey, a grand-nephew of Lem who lives in Kialla, said.
“What happened was a tragedy, I would love for Lem to be amongst the soldiers they identify.”
Part of the 29th Battalion, Lem enlisted in 1915, and less than a year later found himself in the battlefields of France, where he died.
His name appears on a list of nine soldiers that an eyewitness reported as seeing buried together in the aftermath of the battle.
Of those nine soldiers, four have been identified among those buried in a mass grave at Pheasant Wood Cemetery and the association hoped there was a chance that Lem was one of those unidentified.
“Those ‘boys’ deserve the basic recognition of their name being inscribed on their headstone, not just for them, but for their families and descendants,” Fromelles Association spokesman Geoffrey Benn said.
“The association members have made it their mission to discover the identities of the final 84 men, through community-based genealogical research, and are calling on members of the public to help.”
The association has helped to identify some of the 166 men from the mass grave so far and runs a website, www.fromelles.info to collect, preserve and store family memorabilia, evidence and information from members of the public and to help them identify new potential DNA donors.
“Hundreds of hours of meticulous research go into the discovery of just one potential donor,” Mr Benn said.
“They died for their country, it’s the least we can do.”