A Donegal solider is among ten men from Irish regiments who died in the first World War who will be honoured this month after their graves were located.
Rededication services will take place in France and Belgium following research carried out by a group known as the war detectives.
Among the ten is Sgt John Doherty, who won the Military Medal and was from Letterkenny.
He was killed while serving with the 1st battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during the German spring offensive of March 1918.
Tragically, Sgt Doyle was one of three brothers killed in the war.
The ten men are buried in graves, but their headstones only indicate their regiments rather than their names, the Irish Times reports.
Almost half of the 1.1 million British and Commonwealth soldiers who died in the first World War have no known grave.
Such was the scale of mutilation and large-scale carnage that it was impossible to identify many of the fatalities found on the battlefield.
In the case of the 10 men for whom rededication ceremonies will take place, they were originally identified only by their uniforms, stripes or cap badges.
Their gravestones state their regiment, but not their names. Their names are instead remembered on memorials such as the New Menin Gate or the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing.
The UK ministry of defence’s war detectives squad, officially known as the Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre (JCCC), is tasked with matching the graves with regimental diaries which record how and where men died during the war.
Though the first World War ended more than a century ago, the search to identify remains has never stopped.
For full story see https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/06/27/graves-of-irish-men-who-died-in-first-world-war-identified-after-more-than-a-century/