I crouched in a shallow trench on that hell of exposed beaches … Steeply rising foothills bare of cover … A landscape pockmarked with war’s inevitable litter … Piles of stores … Equipment … Ammunition … And the weird contortions of death sculptuered in Australian flesh … I saw the going down of the sun on that first ANZAC Day … The chaotic maelstorm of Australian’s blooding.

I fought in the frozen mud of the Somme … In a blazing destroyer exploding on the North Sea … I fought on the perimeter at Tobruk … Crashed int he flaming wreckage of a fighter in New Guinea … Lives with the damned in the place cursed with the name Changi.

I was your mate … The kid across the street … The med. student at graduation .. The mechanic in the corner garage … The baker who brought you bread … The gardener who cut your lawn … The clerk who sent your phone bill.

I was an Army private … A Naval commander … An Air Force bombardier … No man knows me … No name marks my tomb, for I am every Australian serviceman … I am the Unknown Soldier.

I died for a cause I held just in the service of my land … That you and yours may see in freedom … I am a proud Australian.

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them
- Laurence Binyon, 1914

LEST WE FORGET