For Duty Done: A WWI Military Medallion Recovered from the Mass Grave Site at Fromelles, Northern France

The artefact to be discussed in this paper was recovered in 2007 during the preliminary field investigation of the suspected site of grave pits containing Australian and possibly British soldiers killed in the Battle of Fromelles in 1916. It was one of two medallions recovered, both of which were clearly Australian in origin. These rarely encountered artefacts played a key role in convincing the Australian authorities that there was a distinct possibility that the burials, made by the Germans behind their own lines in the days after the battle, were still intact, despite attempts to locate them in the immediate aftermath of the war. As a consequence, a second programme of investigation was commissioned by the Australian Army and in the summer of 2008 limited trial excavation uncovered the remains of Australian and British soldiers in six of the eight pits known to have been dug by the Germans. In 2009 the graves were fully excavated and all of the remains removed, prior to reburial in a newly created cemetery in 2010.