A FAMILY'S heartache was laid bare in the few simple words published in memory of West Wallsend Digger John "Jock" Neilson in the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate on October 1919.
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"Called to a higher service," the family's short newspaper notice read. The 27-year-old had been missing since the Battle of Passchendaele on the Western Front two years earlier.
After a desperate search for information, his parents Alex and Jessie were advised in October 1918 that their son had been classified as "killed in action".
They were told he had been stretchered off the battlefield with severe shrapnel injuries and taken to a field hospital.
No further records existed.
The painful mystery of Private Neilson's final whereabouts hung over the family until last month when the soldier's great nephew Wayne Neilson from Hamilton received an unexpected call from Fallen Diggers Incorporated president Dennis Frank.
Mr Frank said the volunteer military archaeology group had confirmed that the details of a soldier buried in an unmarked grave in Birr Cross Cemetery, Belgium had been matched to official Australian military records.
"You could have knocked me over with a feather," Mr Neilson, said. "I'd heard about Jock since I was kid but I didn't know anything more than anyone else."
The key to being able to identify Private Neilson was the coloured sleeve patch of the 8th Battalion that he was wearing when he died on October 10, 1917.
This was cross-matched with records of Australian soldiers who died that day.
"It wasn't possible to do this in the past because researchers didn't have access to the huge number of data bases and records that we now have at our fingertips," Mr Frank said.
When Fallen Diggers Inc believes it has positively identified a soldier's grave it submits its research to the Office of Australian War Graves for official verification.
"Jock was one of the easier ones that we have worked on," Mr Frank, who has identified an average of four soldiers a year in recent years, said.
"It's always pretty emotional when you ring a soldier's family to tell them that they have been found. In Jock's case I didn't know where to start so I just looked in the white pages for Neilsons in Newcastle. The first call I made was to Wayne Neilson. It was as if Jock led me to him."
Private Neilson was one of three Australian World War I soldiers whose remains have been positively identified in Birr Cross cemetery recently.
Their headstones have been remade and their graves will be re-dedicated at a service to be held on September 20.
Neilson family representatives, Mr Frank, Australian Embassy staff, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and clergy will be in attendance.
"I've contacted the whole extended family. The Neilsons are coming from around the world to be there," Mr Neilson said.
