We are here today to pay our respects to our forebears who fought the Great War. We are also here to acknowledge the work of this generation, to remember that generation and to be worthy of the service and sacrifice, the duty and honour which that generation so abundantly showed in its service to our country and to the wider world in the Great War.
Even one hundred years on, the Great War casts a long shadow.
To think of just one illustration, right now there is a problem, as you know, in the Middle East and the settlement which the Daesh death cult and others wish to disturb is the settlement that was put in place by Britain and France at the conclusion of the Great War.
So, history has its echoes – sometimes horrible echoes, sometimes noble and laudable echoes, such as the work we are about to perform this afternoon.
We should never forget the impact of the Great War on Australia and the wider world.
In those days, we had a population of scarcely five million people. Of that five million, 400,000 volunteered to serve in the Australian Imperial Force; 330,000 left our shores; 150,000 were wounded; 61,000 never came back; and tens of thousands more carried the unseen scars of war for the rest of their lives.
No one who lived through the Great War, whether they went abroad or whether they remained at home, was untouched by it.
Yes, it was, in a sense, the crucible in which our national identity was forged, but it left horrific scars.
We will remember in just a few weeks’ time the Centenary of Anzac.
Gallipoli was, obviously, in a critical sense our nation’s baptism of fire and 8,000 Australians didn’t come back. Gallipoli, though, was a defeat. It was in its own way a magnificent and honourable defeat, but a defeat nonetheless.
We will remember Gallipoli in just a few weeks’ time, but over the next few years we will remember all the other actions in which Australia was involved – not just Gallipoli – the actions in Sinai and Palestine, the capture of Jerusalem and Damascus and, of course, the action on the Western Front where we were involved for two long and horrific years.
While Gallipoli was a defeat, the Western Front was a victory – a victory at a terrible cost, but a victory nonetheless – a victory where the Australians, under General Sir John Monash, played an absolutely critical part in the conduct of the war and, ultimately, in the defeat of our main adversary.
The culmination, for me at least, of this Centenary of Anzac period will be the unveiling in 2018 of the John Monash Centre at Villers-Bretonneux in France. Villers-Bretonneux was the site of a great Australian victory in the Western Front. It was, if you like, the beginning of the end for Germany, because it was where the main German offensive faltered in the Spring of 1918 and it was from that point that Monash, in particular, and the Australian Army was able to help roll back the German offensive using the ‘all arms’ concept of war which General Monash devised and the Australians under his command put into practice.
So, there’s much to do and much to remember over the next few years, but I want particularly to congratulate the people of the West Tamar and the Exeter RSL for the work that you have done here today. It is a work of remembrance, it is a work of commemoration. It’s a work of respect to the people of this district – the men of this district – who when their country called answered that call with commitment, with courage, with patriotism and, of course, many paid a high price.
Some 15,000 Tasmanians volunteered to serve in the Great War and today we remember all of them, but we particularly remember those of the West Tamar.
Lest we forget.
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