War history is a family affair when it comes to sisters Ruythe Dufty and Sue-Ellen Nash and Sue's husband John Nash, pictured.
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This week has been especially significant and sad but with a wonderful sense of love and remembrance for their families, and for thousands of other families across the nation.
The battles of Fromelles and Pozieres occurred within days of each other and have been the centre of centenary commemorations for Australians killed during those first forays on the Western Front during 1916 and World War 1.
More than 46,000 Australians died in France and Belgium and about 18,000 have no known grave - but scores of families across the region have been on special pilgrimages, not to bring them home, but more importantly to give them a dignified burial and mark their places in our family histories.
They've marked the Western Front centenary commemorations in various ways too, mirroring the sombre ceremonies on the battlefields where Veterans Affairs minister Dan Tehan and hundreds of Australians have made the pilgrimage too.
Mr Tehan described Pozieres as a bloody and brutal battle - a military success - where our soldiers captured the village and held it but success came at a terrible cost.
More Australians were lost in eight weeks of fighting in France than during eight months on Gallipoli.
John Nash's great uncle Bert Williamson was another one of the 54th Battalion, the front wave attacking force at Fromelles, killed and buried in a mass grave.
He and wife Sue-Ellen attended the 2014 headstone dedications.
On Sue-Ellen and her sister Ruythe Dufty's family side, two great uncles lie in foreign lands. Arthur Weigold was killed at Passchendaele in October 1917. There's no known grave of another great uncle, Thomas Taylor Marsden, a Bingara farmer, who died October 1917 but whose name is recorded on the Menin Gate at Ypres. Scores of local families have marked sombre commemorations for the first wave of the Western Front casualties since July 20.