Adamstown soldier named 110 years after Battle of Fromelles
by Dylan Nicholson · Newcastle HeraldAn Adamstown soldier who died in one of the bloodiest nights in Australian military history has been named, 110 years after he was buried as an unknown man in France.
Private Thomas Easton, of the 30th Battalion, is among 11 Australian First World War soldiers formally identified by the Australian Army, the Federal Government announced on Remembrance Day.
Private Easton was killed in action at the Battle of Fromelles on July 19-20, 1916, and is buried at Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery in northern France.
Service records show he was born in Jesmond in 1888 and worked as a miner at Teralba.
His father, James, lived in Adamstown and was listed as his next of kin.
He enlisted in Newcastle in 1915, aged 26 or 27, and embarked from Sydney on HMAT Ballarat on February 16, 1916 to Suez in Egypt before embarking at Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force in France.
He reached France that June, just weeks before Fromelles.
The 30th Battalion was among the Australian units thrown against German lines at Fromelles in the 5th Australian Division's first major action on the Western Front.
The battle cost the division more than 5500 casualties in a single night.
The identifications followed archaeological, historical and DNA investigations by the Army's Unrecovered War Casualties team, working with the Office of Australian War Graves, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, French authorities, independent researchers and descendants.
Defence Minister Richard Marles said the men, who also died at the Somme, Bullecourt, Menin Road, Passchendaele, Amiens and the Advance to the Hindenburg Line, "each made the ultimate sacrifice in service to Australia".
Veterans' Affairs Minister Matt Keogh said the identifications would "provide long awaited answers for families who have experienced generations of uncertainty".
"Through the dedication of military historians, archaeologists, researchers, forensic specialists and family members, these soldiers have now been identified and will be commemorated by name for the first time in more than a century," Mr Keogh said.
Private Easton was one of seven soldiers named from infantry and machine-gun units.
A further four men from the 2nd Australian Field Ambulance, killed by a shell at a Regimental Aid Post during the Second Battle of Bullecourt in May 1917, were also identified after their remains were recovered in France in April 2025.
The other soldiers are from Armidale, Ballarat, Lilydale, Randwick, Bundaberg, Melbourne, Preston, Fremantle, Queenstown and Brunswick.