ALMOST to the day 98 years after he was killed in the bloody Battle of Fromelles, the war grave of Tumbarumba soldier Herbert Newey St Smith will have a headstone bearing his name.
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Private St Smith has been named this week as one of 20 newly-identified soldiers among 250 Australian and British World War I servicemen whose remains were recovered from burial pits at Pheasant Wood near the French village of Fromelles in 2009.
The soldiers were reburied in the Fromelles Military Cemetery in 2010.
A headstone dedication ceremony for the 20 newly-identified soldiers will be held at the cemetery on July 19, 2014.
Private St Smith died on July 20, 1916, and was one of 5533 Australians killed or wounded in a 24-hour period - the bloodiest day in the nation's military history.
He was 40-years-old and a member of the 55th Battalion.
He was identified through a DNA match with his only living male relative, 64-year-old John St Smith, of Buderim, who is a great-nephew.
Mr St Smith said he had known almost nothing of his great-uncle until government authorities tracked him down through Google.
"I was aware of some connection, but it was only when I looked at the family tree in an old St James Bible that I saw there was a connection to Tumbarumba," Mr St Smith said.
Herbert Newey St Smith was the third child of James and Margaret St Smith, who were married in Albury in 1872.
He was an auctioneer in Tumbarumba and was rejected for enlistment four times before succeeding in Sydney when he was aged 39 and four months, said the president of the Tumbarumba Historical Society, Ron Frew.
"He was determined to enlist," Mr Frew said.
Mr Frew and his wife, Catherine, wrote the book Sons to the Empire's Cause - Tumbarumba in World War I.
"That is how he died, still working in the same zealous and energetic spirit by which he proved his love for King and Country and sealed it with his own life."
- Corporal WR Smith
The book quotes an account of Private St Smith's disappearance by his mate, Corporal WR Smith.
Corporal Smith told the Red Cross: "Bert, as we called him, was in my section.
"During a raid on the enemy trenches it was Bert's job with others to keep up the water and ammunition supply.
"He worked hard, like a Trojan in fact, and set a fine example to the rest of us.
"He even found time to lend a hand to other sections as well as his own and going into another trench was the last time I saw him.
"That is how he died, still working in the same zealous and energetic spirit by which he proved his love for King and Country and sealed it with his own life."
Amateur historian and former Tumbarumba mayor, George Martin, said it was a fabulous thing that a local boy had been discovered and would have his own headstone.
Mr St Smith said he had been invited to the July 19 ceremony but would not be able to attend because his daughter was getting married at that time.
However, he said he hoped to visit France in a year or two where he would pay his respects to Private St Smith and a second cousin, Alex St Smith, who was a pilot of the famous G for George Lancaster bomber in the Australian War Memorial and who was killed flying a Mosquito fighter-bomber in France in 1944.
Mr Frew said Private St Smith's identity tags were found by the Germans after his death and handed over to the Red Cross for return to his family on November 12, 1916.
