LOOS-EN-GOHELLE, France — Scotsman William McAleer had been in France barely two months when, just before sunrise on Sept. 25, 1915, he was among thousands of other troops who launched the British army’s largest attack so far of World War I.
By the next day, the 22-year-old private from a town in Fife was dead. Almost 60,000 British troops died in the Battle of Loos, and a third disappeared with no known grave.
McAleer was one of them, until nearly a century later, when workers building a new prison turned up his remains in a common grave.
On Friday, McAleer and 19 other still unidentified British soldiers were reburied with full military honors in a ceremony in this sleepy northern French village, close to where they fell in battle.
A bagpiper played ‘‘Amazing Grace’’ as McAleer’s coffin was carried through the fog-shrouded cemetery Friday morning by six Royal Regiment of Scotland soldiers wearing kilts. A distant relative of McAleer’s, Stephen McLeod, represented McAleer’s family at the funeral.
Around 200 people, some from as far away as Australia, turned out for the hourlong ceremony. Many were history buffs who’d heard about the ceremony on the website of the Western Front Association, a historical society.