Reburial: Fromelles Military Cemetery

In similar exercises, by the end of February 2010, 249 of 250 bodies recovered from Pheasant Wood in the Fromelles - where in July 1916 the first major battle was fought by Australian troops on the Western Front - had been reburied in the new cemetery.

In 2014, the families of soldiers buried in unmarked graves began a campaign in Australia to exhume mass graves of fallen Gallipoli soldiers. According to John Basarin, chairman of the Friends of Gallipoli committee, the arguments put forward were that ‘people have paid their ultimate sacrifice and deserve to be treated - if they're found - in the normal manner they should be accustomed to, with a headstone at a proper burial place where the descendants can go and pay their respects on location'.^[1083] There has been controversy and debate about the uses of this technology and the state's use of it.^{[1084] [1085]} Families and descendants have been active in supporting this form of commemorative practice to honour the dead by identifying them and providing a full reburial and ceremony. The centenary of World War I has especially drawn attention to these practices. But they have also now been applied to commemorative practices of other violent events such as civil wars.