I opened my letterbox in April 2023 and discovered a letter that I'd never expected to receive.  It contained a unique and intriguing request for assistance.

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World War One created great upheaval throughout continental Europe.  The assassination of an Archduke and complicated international alliances prompted the bloodiest conflict the world had ever witnessed at that time.  An estimated 20 million people were killed and 21 million more were wounded.  It’s also estimated that more civilians were killed than military personnel.  The ripple effects of the war – displacement of millions of refugees, destruction of property and farmland, destruction of national economies, redistribution of territory and the global spread of Spanish Influenza in the immediate aftermath – were equally destructive, if not more so.

What many people around the world mightn’t realise is that the war’s shattering impact wasn’t limited to Europe.  Many Commonwealth countries, including my homeland of Australia, sent a significant proportion of their young men to fight in support of our chief military ally, Great Britain.  Australia was an extraordinarily young country in 1914 at the outbreak of war, having only been declared a nation on January 1, 1901.  Prior to that, we were a collection of self-governing British colonies which subsequently became Australian states and territories. 

According to the national Australian War Memorial, the Australian population in 1914 was “approximately 4.9 million” and “416,809 Australians enlisted for service in the First World War, representing 38.7% of the male population aged 18 to 44.”  That’s right – 38.7%.  The cream of a generation of young men vanished in those battlefields.  Every little town throughout our country, no matter how sparsely populated, has a stone obelisk featuring lists of names of the young men from that district who never came home.

Many of my family members served during World War One, including my grandfather (my father’s father) who kept fascinating diaries throughout the period of his war service.  They describe leaving Australia aboard his troop ship late in 1914, training in Egypt at the foot of the Pyramids, fighting and being wounded at Gallipoli, recovering in Malta and England, and finally returning to Australia as a recruiting sergeant in 1917. 

Other family members never returned.  Private Thomas McCluskey was one of them.  He was my grandmother’s uncle.  I vaguely remember her telling stories about him when I was a very little girl, but it’s so long ago that I can’t remember any specifics.  My grandmother and my mother are both gone now, so those personal anecdotes about Tom McCluskey – the man, not the soldier – have been lost to history.

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Imagine my surprise back in April last year when, out of the blue, I received a letter from the Genomics Research Centre at the Queensland University of Technology.  The letter outlines a project being conducted by the Centre in collaboration with the Australian Department of Defence.  In part, it states:

“We have contacted you because the GRC and Defence’s research has indicated that you are the maternal great grand niece of missing Australian Defence member Pte Thomas Miller McCluskey.  Please find attached a condensed family tree which outlines your relationship to the soldier …

“The goal of this project is to use advanced DNA technology to identify recovered human remains believed to be Australian Defence personnel, who are missing or presumed dead, from either World War One or World War Two.  To do this, we need to compare the DNA from biological relatives of missing Australian service personnel to the DNA from the recovered human remains.  The Department of Defence’s Unrecovered War Casualties – Army, in collaboration with the GRC, undertake searches of public records in an effort to locate suitable relatives for DNA comparison.  Your DNA may help us to identify one of the human remains we are attempting to trace.  You are therefore invited to voluntarily participate in our project by providing a saliva sample.”

I’ll admit that my first reaction upon reading this letter was to smell a rat.  This must surely be a scam!  Send someone my DNA?  Through the post?  Really?  But wait a minute – right there on the next page was the condensed family tree bearing the names of my maternal relatives.  My goodness.  All those details were correct.  If this was a scam, then it was a particularly elaborate one.  Some independent Googling verified the existence of the program – its directors, its methods, and its relationship with the Department of Defence.  This letter seemed legitimate.

Further Googling revealed a little more information about Private McCluskey.  Like many other thousands of World War One soldiers from all over the world with no known graves, his name is recorded on the Menin Gate in Belgium.  He fought with the First AIF (Australian Imperial Force) and his date of death was recorded as October 4, 1917, although his body wasn’t recovered at the time.  The major battle involving Australian troops that occurred on October 4, 1917 was the Battle of Broodseinde, which formed part of the Third Battle of Ypres.  Ypres is a name which sends shivers down the spine of anyone with knowledge of Australian military history.  The casualties associated with this location were extensive.

The Battle of Broodseinde took place in heavy rain and “the ordeal in the swampy area in the dark and the fog was indescribable”.  The battle consisted of bite-and-hold tactics exercised by the British and their allied forces – capturing a small section of ground, maintaining it at all costs, and advancing little by little upon a tiring German army.  Nine Victoria Crosses for bravery were awarded during the battle.

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During the maelstrom of work and theatre commitments that consumed me throughout 2023, the letter from QUT sat idle on my table for many months.  Once I’d completed the consent form online, it was joined by subsequent correspondence, including a saliva collection kit.  During my summer holidays, when I was free from other commitments for a while, I finally supplied the DNA sample and put it in the post.

Will my DNA prove to be a match?  Will they be able to make the identification?  Will my great grand uncle’s remains finally be buried under his own name?  I know what that would have meant to my grandmother.

We must wait and see.