For more than a century, the British soldier lay in an anonymous grave, one of so many unidentified victims buried beneath the killing fields of World War I. But now, his headstone finally bears a name: 2nd Lt. Osmund Bartle Wordsworth—a great-great-nephew of English poet William Wordsworth—who was recently identified by DNA research and given a funeral ceremony Tuesday, 105 years after he died.
A new headstone for Wordsworth, who was killed in action in the Battle of Arras in April 1917, was mounted at his gravesite at a cemetery in Ecoust-St.-Mein in northern France, reports the AP. A cleric led the ceremony, and a British military attache handed Wordsworth's relatives a carefully folded French flag to place on the grave. The evolution of DNA technology has allowed for the identification of more and more unknown soldiers from World War I. A service will be held for others in Ypres, Belgium, next week.
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