Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles has called his family’s connection to Remembrance Day “deeply personal” following revelations he is related to a WWI soldier who has been identified after more than a century.
Lieutenant Andrew Anderson was killed in action on September 20, 1917, during the Battle of Menin Road Ridge in Belgium. Anderson is Marles’ great-uncle.
“It’s a remarkable story,” the senior minister told ABC’s News Breakfast. “I was notified a few weeks ago that I was one of the living relatives, the next of kin to Lieutenant Andrew Anderson.”
“For more than a century, he has been in the Hooge Crater Cemetery in Belgium under an unknown soldier headstone … And in the last month or so, he’s been formally identified, which means that next year there’ll be a formal service which will change the headstone over his grave.”
Anderson was officially identified along with 10 other previously unknown WWI soldiers through DNA analysis and historical research conducted by the Unrecovered War Casualties team, the Office of Australian War Graves, and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
“It’s a genuinely remarkable revelation for us as a family, and it’s incredible that this work continues,” Marles said.
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