When 22-year-old David Irvin went off to World War I, he arrived in time to fight in Australia's greatest military disaster — at Fromelles in France. He was never seen again after being first reported wounded, then missing, then killed and it would be nearly a century before the mystery was solved. In 2008, a mass grave was discovered behind former German trenches and in it, David's remains, discovered with the help of living relatives and DNA testing.

Before David Irvin and six other volunteers left the small farming community of Bemboka in south-east New South Wales to go to war, they were celebrated with a village 'social' one night and were guests of honour at the village pub the next. Irvin arrived in France in June 1916 as one of thousands of new recruits sent to reinforce Gallipoli veterans to join the fighting on the Western Front. Three weeks later, the newly-formed 54th Battalion went into battle near the French village of Fromelles.

The attack began at 6pm on July 19, with the Australians succeeding in breaching only around one kilometre of the German trenches, while suffering massive losses from machine gun fire. The well-defended German line was manned by the 6th Bavarian Reserve Division, which included a young Austrian corporal named Adolph Hitler.

After enduring a series of counter-attacks throughout the night, the Australians were ordered to withdraw at dawn but Irvin did not return. The Red Cross later recorded a witness account that Irvin had been: "wounded in the shoulder and was bandaged up about 20 minutes before 'going over'. He was able to carry on and joined the attack, but I never saw him again".

The following month, in August 1916, Irvin's parents received an army telegram telling them their son had been wounded. Rosemary Irvin, the widow of one of David's nephews, said his parents began to worry when his letters stopped arriving:

The army still believed that Irvin was wounded and wrote back to advise his family of a postal address via the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) headquarters in London, and telling them letters sent to Irvin would "reach the soldier safely".

However, there were still no letters in response from David:

The Battle of Fromelles was Australia's most costly military disaster and Irvin was one of more than 5,500 casualties. Many men fell behind the German lines or in no-man's land so it was difficult for Australian forces to know who was dead or wounded or missing. Irvin had got through the German lines, his body found after they recaptured the area. The German forces were meticulous with their record keeping, and within two weeks had identified his body and recorded the details at their headquarters in Berlin. Meanwhile, for many months, Irvin's parents kept hoping.

In March 1917, eight months after the battle, the army wrote again to his parents, advising them their son's status had changed from wounded to missing since July 19th or 20th, 1916. Eventually, his identification tags were sent to the Australian Army's London headquarters via the Red Cross, with confirmation that he had been killed in action. It was more weeks before George and Elizabeth Irvin received the news of their son's death at their Bega Valley farm:

However, nobody knew where Irvin was buried and it would take another 90 years to solve the mystery. A Melbourne art teacher with an interest in military history, Lambis Englezos, searched German military archives that found records of a mass grave of Australians, dug behind German lines. When the graves were found, families of soldiers who had fallen at Fromelles and whose bodies had never been found were asked to provide DNA samples.

David’s nephew Keith and a cousin, Ann Tyrell, provided samples that were compared with DNA from recovered remains. In this way, David's remains were identified, but Ms Tyrell passed away soon after donating the DNA sample and never knew the outcome. A new Commonwealth War Graves cemetery was established at Fromelles in 2010 and the remains of 250 soldiers are now buried there. Ms Irvin and her sister-in-law attended the dedication ceremony.

"We walked around the whole cemetery and finally found him." Ms Irvin said. "There ended up being 12 relatives who'd come from Australia to be there."

Source: Ms Irvin, ABC South East NSW, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-18/fromelles-100-years-on-family-remembers-young-soldier-lost/7638274