Australia’s Governor-General Quentin Bryce, Prince Charles and more than a dozen members of Private Samuel Charles Wilson and his brother Private Eric Robert Wilson’s family will honour the men in the first commemoration ceremony in Fromelles in north France.

On July 19, 1916 in the Battle of Fromelles, Samuel and Eric were killed and their bodies left in an unmarked mass grave.

A third brother, Jim, was shot but survived.

In 2008, a farmer in Fromelles found what proved to be the first of six mass graves of 250 Allied soldiers.

It is assumed the soldiers were buried by the Germans in these graves to prevent the spread of disease as the attack occurred during a hot summer and many died in German lines.

Extensive DNA testing identified the Wilson brothers as being among the soldiers found.

They were identified by a Joint Identification Board, its members representatives of the British and Australian governments.

The Wilsons, who worked at their father’s timber mill in Port Macquarie, enlisted in Port Macquarie and were members of the 53rd Battalion, 14th Brigade.

To commemorate the fallen at Fromelles, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission built a new cemetery and it is planned that it will be fully dedicated today – 94 years after the battle.