Remembrance Day
November 11, 2013
Tribute to our
unknown soldier
R
emembrance Day marks
the anniversary of the
armistice which ended
World War I (1914–18).
Each year Australians
observe one minute silence at
11am on November 11, in
memory of those who died or
suffered in all wars and armed
conflicts.
This year is not only the 95th
anniversary of the armistice
which ended World War I, but
also the 20th anniversary of the
reinterment of the Unknown
Australian Soldier in the
Australian War Memorial’s Hall
of Memory.
To mark the significant
occasion, this year’s national
Remembrance Day
Commemorative Address in
Canberra will be delivered by
former Australian Prime
Minister, Paul Keating, who
delivered the poignant eulogy of
the Unknown Australian Soldier
in 1993.
As part of the day’s events,
part of Mr Keating's eulogy,
which has been immortalised in
bronze and attached to the
tomb of the unknown soldier,
❑ The original unknown soldier was entombed
in Westminster Abbey in London on November
11, 1920, two days after being brought from
France.
❑ His body had been selected by General Wyatt
from among four, each draped in the Union
Jack. The soldier was assumed to have been
British (though he could have been a Canadian,
a New Zealander, or even an Australian) but he
was intended to represent all the young men of
the British Empire killed during the Great War.
❑ Plans to honour an unknown Australian
soldier were first put forward in the 1920s but it
was not until 1993 that one was at last brought
home.
❑ To mark the 75th anniversary of the end of
World War I, the body of an unknown Australian
soldier was recovered from Adelaide Cemetery
near Villers- Bretonneux in France and transported to Australia .
❑ After lying in state in King's Hall in Old
Parliament House, the Unknown Australian
Soldier was interred in the Hall of Memory at
the Australian War Memorial on November 11,
1993.
❑ He was buried with a bayonet and a sprig of
wattle in a Tasmanian blackwood coffin, and soil
from the Pozières battlefield was scattered in
his tomb.
will be unveiled. Brendan
Nelson, Australian War
Memorial director and a former
Liberal leader, said he
considered Mr Keating's eulogy
as “one of the most significant
speeches given by any
Australian prime minister in
any era since Federation”.
“I said to Paul Keating
recently that not only will it
stand the test of time, it already
has,” Dr Nelson said.
The remains of an unknown
Australian soldier killed in
World War I were returned from
France in 1993, and buried in a
tomb within the memorial to
represent all Australians who
BEN ROBERTS-SMITH
have died in wars. One end of
the tomb reads, “Known Unto
God”, and the other, “He
symbolises all Australians who
have died in war”.
Mr Keating’s words, which
have been added to the tomb,
are: “We do not know this
Australian's name, we never
will” and “He is one of them,
and he is all of us”.
At the end of the day’s
commemorations, at the Last
Post ceremony, Ben RobertsSmith VC will read that same
eulogy to commemorate the
unknown soldier and the
102,000 names listed on the Roll
of Honour.
Words honour all who gave their lives
EXTRACT FROM PAUL KEATING’S EULOGY
NOVEMBER 11, 1993
“
We do not know this Australian's
name and we never will. We do
not know his rank or his
battalion. We do not know where he was
born, nor precisely how and when he
died.
We do not know where in Australia he
had made his home or when he left it for
the battlefields of Europe.
We do not know his age or his
circumstances – whether he was from
the city or the bush; what occupation he
left to become a soldier; what religion, if
he had a religion; if he was married or
single.
We do not know who loved him or
whom he loved. If he had children, we do
not know who they are. His family is lost
to us as he was lost to them.
We will never know who this
Australian was.
Yet he has always been among those
whom we have honoured.
We know that he was one of the
45,000 Australians who died on the
Western Front.
One of the 416,000 Australians who
volunteered for service in the First World
War. One of the 324,000 Australians who
served overseas in that war and one of
the 60,000 Australians who died on
foreign soil.
One of the 100,000 Australians who
have died in wars this century.
He is all of them. And he is one of us.
This Australia and the Australia he
knew are like foreign countries.
The tide of events since he died has
been so dramatic, so vast and allconsuming, a world has been created
beyond the reach of his imagination.
He may have been one of those who
believed that the Great War would be an
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BRENDAN NELSON
KATHERINE TIMES, WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 6, 2013
www.katherinetimes.com.au
adventure too grand to miss. He may
have felt that he would never live down
the shame of not going.
But the chances are he went for no
other reason than that he believed it was
his duty - the duty he owed his country
and his King.
Because the Great War was a mad,
brutal, awful struggle, distinguished
more often than not by military and
political incompetence; because the
waste of human life was so terrible that
some said victory was scarcely
discernible from defeat; and because the
war which was supposed to end all wars
in fact sowed the seeds of a second,
even more terrible, war - we might think
this Unknown Soldier died in vain.
But, in honouring our war dead, as we
always have and as we do today, we
declare that this is not true.
For out of the war came a lesson
which transcended the horror and
tragedy and the inexcusable folly.
It was a lesson about ordinary people
– and the lesson was that they were not
ordinary.
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ROAD TO RECOGNITION
PAUL KEATING