Last year a grainy photo of an Aboriginal soldier who fought in World War I was published on ABC Online and in newspapers in a bid by a group of filmmakers to learn the man's identity.

All the filmmakers knew was that he was one of around 5,000 tunnellers who spent the war laying mines under German trenches on the Western Front.

The mines were detonated to blow up the trenches overhead and create breaches in the front line which could then be exploited by conventional infantry attacks.

Now, for the first time, the Aboriginal soldier can be identified as Herbert Murray.

Ross Thomas, who is involved in the Beneath Hill 60 film project, originally found the 1917 snapshot.

It depicts seven men in slouch hats before they are sent into the tunnels, but does not name them.

"It's been haunting me for a number of years," Mr Thomas said.

Now an amateur historian in Canberra has found another photo of the same soldier that does have a name.

"The match is nigh on perfect and quite emotional to see that match," Mr Thomas said.

Sapper Murray, from Victoria, may have been the only tunneller out of the 500 or so Aboriginal men who fought in World War I.

Sapper Murray would have spent the war in cramped and perilous conditions underground, trying to break the deadlock on the Western Front.

Historian Jonathan King says Australian tunnellers' war efforts have been largely overlooked in favour of the men who fought in the trenches.

"They were the heroes because they were above ground and were easy to see," Mr King said.

"The tunnellers were under the ground. Nobody quite realised what they were doing."

The Australian War Memorial has tunnellers' unit diaries, but there is little else to mark their contribution to the war.

Mr Thomas says the tunnellers have largely been forgotten because of a political and military amnesia at the time.

"It was the ungentleman-like way of fighting," he said.

"This whole concept of tunnelling below the enemy lines and placing a charge wasn't the honourable way of killing."

Dr Peter Pederson, senior historian at the Australian War Memorial, says in proportion to the army as a whole, tunnellers represent a very small element.

"Their work naturally was accompanied by very high security; the fewer people who knew about it the better and it just didn't have the dash or the impact that a big attack above ground would have," Dr Pederson said.

"But most of the mine craters, the big mine craters, are still there.

"They're an evocative reminder of what happened."

-Adapted from report by Zoie Jones for AM