A few words say so much for our fallen heroes

PROUD: Australia’s Federation Guard on Remembrance Day in Canberra. Photo by AB Neil Richards

Volume 48, No. 22, November 30, 2006

IT WAS easy from the safe distance of this century to settle for the abstract, the broad brushstrokes of history – to forget sacrifices made in our name, Defence Minister Dr Brendan Nelson said in his Remembrance Day address.

“Today we pause with awkward humility, free and confident heirs to a legacy of self-sacrifice in commitment to one another, our nation and the ideals of mankind,” Dr Nelson told the gathering at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

“Family epitaphs to the dead, in so few words, say so much of love, life, loss and us,” he said. “Each of them had only one life – only one chance to use it in a way that served the interests of others and the welfare of our nation.

“All who wear Australia’s Service uniforms remind us that there are some truths by which we live that are worth fighting to defend. We honour them by the way we use our lives and shape our nation.

“We now face distant horizons and new but no less ubiquitous or dangerous threats to that for which this nation has stood in its short history.

“The guns fell silent on this day, at this hour, 88 years ago. No words can do justice to the lives of the 61,720 Australians who were then dead.

“How do we bring meaning to 155,000 Australians wounded, returning as they did, forever changed, into the arms of families? Much that is precious was left behind.

“We did not see them in battle, their courage, support of one another and irreverent humour. Nor did we sense their heroic fear. They forged national identity in values that are ours – ones that make us who we are.

“The nature and magnitude of their sacrifice, from a nation of barely 5 million people who twice rejected conscription, laid the foundation for belief in ourselves.

“Our young nation emerged to take a more confident place in the world.

“After the bloodbath that was Fromelles, SGT Simon Fraser spent three days bringing in the wounded. Exhausted, a voice rose through the fog from no-man’s-land, ‘Don’t forget me, cobber’.

“He didn’t. We won’t. We never will. Lest we forget.”

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