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 Order
of the day
To
all members of the ADF
Farewell message from the CDF
July 3, 2005
As I send you this Order of the Day, I have been in the Army over
40 years, the last three as your Chief of the Defence Force. On
the eve of my retirement I want briefly through this order to bid
you farewell and to describe the enormous honour it has been to
serve you all and to serve with you over the long decades of my
time in uniform.”
We all join the Navy, Army or Air Force for different reasons but
after a remarkably short time the reasons all merge into one: we
serve our country, we serve Australia and our fellow Australians.
We serve patiently at home in our shore establishments and barracks
and bases; we serve abroad in the Navy’s great grey ships, specks
of Australia on the earth’s vast oceans; we serve in the dust and
mud of far-off lands, soldiers in the shadow of the Anzacs; we serve
in the air the world over, an air force second to none. Our families
serve also and equally, with love and patience and apprehension
and a courage different but equal to ours.
Ours is a family of service, unique, precious, hard to enter, harder
still to leave. But leave we all must, as I must now leave.
As I go I fulfil a final duty, to tell you of yourselves. In your
ships’ companies, your battalions and regiments and your squadrons,
where you stand, there stands Australia. In the waters and airways
of the Gulf, in the dust and danger of Iraq, in the jungles of the
Solomon Islands or Timor-Leste or in the sad carnage of Aceh, there
stand our men and women, there stands our nation. In the headquarters
and warehouses and workshops of our bases at home there stand your
countrymen, unremarked but remarkable, doing their utmost for you.
You think you are ordinary people doing your best, and you are.
Your fellow Australians think you are extraordinary men and women
performing extraordinary service and indeed you are.
As I contemplate the last 40 years and the memories wash over me,
particularly of my time as Chief, on this my last day in uniform
let me thank you all for your service to Australia. It has been
the highest honour to stand among you. Farewell and good luck to
you all.
P. J. Cosgrove
Gen
CDF
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