In pictures: family of WWI soldier pay homage at his grave in Belgium

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  Bayne’s grave lies among the 131 Commonwealth soldiers and a handful of German soldiers in this small cemetery surrounded by a landscape still scarred by countless bomb craters, rusting gas shells, bunkers and trenches. Kaylene Biggs, his great granddaughter, places a wooden cross with a poppy and a message on the grave at Westhof Farm Commonwealth Cemetery in Nieuwkerke, Belgium on Thursday, April 24, 2014. Virginia Mayo/ AP Photo

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  Bayne left his wife, Katie, with four young children in Brisbane and a prescient letter of regret: “What a dammed fool I was to ever have enlisted.” Courtesy of the Biggs Family/AP Photo

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  The conflict that spanned from 1914 to 1918 was so unprecedented in its scope and savagery that it became known simply as “The Great War”. Courtesy of the Biggs Family/AP Photo

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  It claimed some 14 million lives – 5 million civilians and 9 million soldiers, sailors and airmen from 28 countries. Courtesy of the Biggs Family/AP Photo

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  At least 7 million troops were left permanently disabled and families across the globe, much like Bayne’s, were wrecked. Virginia Mayo/ AP Photo

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  For Kaylene Biggs, misty-eyed after finally facing the grave of her great-grandfather, the war’s far-reaching legacy makes remembrance all the more important. “It isn’t until you do visit the battlefields that you realise the huge amount of loss and sacrifice.” Virginia Mayo/ AP Photo

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  In this combination photo of the front and back of an undated card provided by the family, a daughter writes words to her father, World War I Australian soldier Andrew Bayne, from Brisbane, Australia. Andrew Bayne’s journey took him to the battlefields of Bullecourt, Wytschaete, and Ypres before he was killed in action near Messines Ridge, Belgium on August 19, 1917. Courtesy of the Biggs Family/AP Photo

One century after the start of the First World War, the family paid homage to a forebear who had travelled half the world to meet his death, his stomach ripped open by an exploding shell, in the horrors of Flanders Fields.