It’s more than 100 years since World War 1 ended.
But that doesn’t mean we stop remembering.
It’s 80 years next year that World War 2 ended.
It’s 50 years next year that Saigon fell.
It’s only three years since Kabul fell.
In all of this there is something solemn to remember.
To keep in our hearts.
And to pass on.
31 years ago today a single Australian soldier came home.
If you go to Canberra today you can visit the place where he lays.
He is the unknown soldier.
We don’t know who he is.
But we know he is one of us.
And at the event to mark the internment of this soldier, then Prime Minister Paul Keating made a speech that I think helps us understand why we are here today.
A speech about the real lesson of war:
“It was a lesson about ordinary people – and the lesson was that they were not ordinary.
On all sides they were the heroes of that war: not the generals and the politicians, but the soldiers and sailors and nurses – those who taught us to endure hardship, show courage, to be bold as well as resilient, to believe in ourselves, to stick together.
…. (they) proved that real nobility and grandeur belongs not to empires and nations but to the people on whom they, in the last resort, always depend.”
That is the essence of the ANZAC story.
And it is the essence of today.
It is why we are here.
Because without them we would not be.
That is why we remember.
That is why we say Lest We Forget.