Fromelles DNA tests set to start in Sept

Australians who believe they are related to the World War I diggers whose remains
were discovered in a mass grave in France will begin undergoing DNA tests in
September to help unlock the mystery of the soldiers' identities.
A team of about 30 forensic archaeologists and anthropologists have been working
since May to recover the bodies of an estimated 250 Australian and British soldiers
from the site at Fromelles in the hope some can be identified before all are
reburied at a new military cemetery nearby.
The site was opened to the media for the first time on Thursday, providing a rare
glimpse of the progress being made amid criticism that some of the work was not up
to scratch.
Independent experts overseeing the operation and those on site have staunchly
defended the standard of archaeological work, saying it is in line with world's best
practice and on track to ensure the soldiers' remains are reinterred with full
military honours in July 2010.
So far the bodies of 222 individuals from the Australian and British armies have
been unearthed along with a range of artefacts including uniform buckles, boots,
badges and handmade metal rings.
About 1,400 Australian and British families who believe they are related to soldiers
who disappeared during the notorious battle of Fromelles in July 1916 have come
forward, offering to do what they can to help identify the troops found in a series
of deep, muddy pits.
Scientists based at DNA analysis firm LGC Forensics in England will begin collecting
genetic samples from families in September to check against those taken from each of
the soldiers.
If there are matches, there is a strong chance a special identification board made
up of Australian and British government representatives and other experts will allow
those soldiers to be reburied with a headstone bearing their name.
LGC's forensic scientist overseeing the DNA profiling, Dr James Walker, said
families with strong paternal or maternal links to soldiers who disappeared at
Fromelles will be asked to provide a swab of cells from the inside of their cheek.
"We could expect the start of the samples from relatives to start coming in from
September onwards," he said.
"We could expect in the order of 1,000 of these samples which all have to be
processed and put on a database for comparisons with the profiles we get from the
(soldiers') remains."
Given that it was more than 90 years since the soldiers were killed, Dr Walker said
it could prove difficult to find relatives who still had direct genetic links.
"We can't use standard paternity type testing because of the fact that most of the
samples we will be doing comparisons on will be from further down the generation,"
he said.
"We are going to have a situation where perhaps there will still be graves with
unknown names, but hopefully we will have a reasonable number where we can put names
to those graves."
Meanwhile, an independent British forensic archaeological and anthropological expert
hired to oversee the Fromelles project has defended the adequacy of work carried out
on the site by Oxford Archaeology.
Dr Margaret Cox, an academic with more than 30 years' experience, dismissed claims
by Belgian battlefield expert Johan Vandewalle that the excavation of the soldiers'
remains had been compromised by drainage problems on the site and methods used to
retrieve the remains.
"There is not one jot of truth in any of them (the claims)," she said.
"The work being done here has been done to the highest international standards."