STANDING inside a makeshift mortuary in a field in France, Louise Loe stared at a photograph of the face of a young Australian soldier. Beside her, marked only by a body number, lay the young man's skeletal remains.

After almost a century of lying forgotten in an unmarked mass grave, this soldier was handed back his identity and could now be remembered. It was the moment a gaping wound in Australia's history finally healed.

On July 19, 1916, the young man bled to death in a muddy field in Fromelles, north France, in what was one of Australia's most futile World War I battles. In just 24 hours, 5533 soldiers were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. The Germans dumped 250 Australian and British soldiers in an unmarked mass grave in a nearby wood. There they lay forgotten, deemed officially missing, until now.

On Monday, 94 years after they were callously buried, the soldiers will officially be laid to rest.

For John Lockwood, Monday will be the day he sheds tears for all his family who never spoke about their missing soldier, Robert Courtney Green. "I'm taking two handkerchiefs," he said of mourning his great-uncle.

Desperate and facing destitution because of his drought-ravaged farm outside Fremantle, Robert Courtney Green signed up with the Australian Army in 1916. He was sent straight to the front-line at Fromelles.

"On that day of that disastrous battle, he was hit with shrapnel in the chest and bled to death in the trenches," Mr Lockwood, 60, said.

He left behind his heartbroken fiancee, Nancie Pearson, a 25-year-old Scottish migrant.

For years, Nancie penned letters to her missing love.

"She writes to him, my Bob, my love, my handsome, I love you so much," Mr Lockwood said. "When you read her letters, there is just a lot of love in them."

Also among the DNA-identified Australian soldiers was Corporal Gregory Francis Stalgis, who fought and died with the 14th Machine Gun Corps at Fromelles.

The 21-year-old railway porter from Sydney was declared missing, but was mistakenly reported to have been seen in a hospital in England. His distraught mother, Annie, refused to accept he could be dead.

During Monday's ceremony, Stalgis's great-nephew, Colin Stalgis, 51, will whisper a quiet "he's home" to Annie as he lays flowers on her son's grave.

"I will be thinking of everybody who lost their lives, not just Gregory," Mr Stalgis said. "When I got the phone call to say they had identified, my uncle I just stood there, tears rolling down my face. I just thought, finally."

For Dr Loe, of Oxford Archaeology, who led the excavation of the clay pit grave, the most moving moment of the painstaking dig was the first time a photo of a soldier was matched to his remains.

"I was standing there wondering `what were they thinking when that photo was taken?' " she said. "It was very powerful and seeing everything, after all this work, come together, uniting a body number to a name, to a person, it was amazing. It was the most emotional project and the one I have felt most connected to."

More than 6000 people are expected to join Prince Charles and Governor General Quentin Bryce in the French countryside when the final soldier is laid to rest on Monday.

DNA tests from living relatives have identified 96 Australian soldiers by name, with 14 South Australians, 55 from New South Wales, 18 Victorians, eight West Australians and one from Queensland. A further 109 soldiers have been identified as Australian, but their names are unknown. Forty-two soldiers remain totally unidentified. DNA testing will continue until 2014 in the hope all will be accounted for.

Last year, Dr Loe led a team of 30 archaeologists and anthropologists in the body recovery.

"Even if some of them have not been named, 250 soldiers who fought and died in that battle and who have been lost for all these years will now finally be remembered," Dr Loe said.