Today is ANZAC Day Down Under and we remember the sacrifice of lives in service of their country. We also remember that these deaths left behind tragedy and sorrow among their families and communities around our own country. Memorials play a part of possibly every town in Australia as few families would ever be able to visit their lost sons and daughters. This is my 2023 commemoration (and yes I haven’t muddled my alphabet).
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below. (Major John McCrae)
In the early days both during and after the war, men were buried with a cross over the grave. Some of course, would lie interred in the soil where they fought and died, undiscovered and unknown. Today, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) does a remarkable job of maintaining large military cemeteries and each grave has a marble memorial.
During World War II, the war came to our shores with the bombing of Darwin on 19 February 1942. Ships were sunk in the harbour and civilians were lost from the Post Office.
Memorials in different parts of Australia vary.
Other countries also memorialise their local service men and women.
On 11 November 1993, an emotional and evocative ceremony took place in the Australian War Memorial when an unidentified, unknown soldier was laid to rest. I watched the ceremony at work and was very moved. https://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/customs-and-ceremony/soldier
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Lest We Forget.
You may wish to read some of my other Anzac Day or Remembrance Day posts, which you can find using the side bar. V is for Villers-Brettoneux remains one of my most read posts. https://cassmobfamilyhistory.com/2012/04/25/v-is-for-the-valiant-of-villers-brettoneux-lest-we-forget/
Family history across the seas 
Lest we forget.
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We visited the WW1 battlefields in France and Belgium in 2015. I didn’t know then that my biological father (born 1892) fought there in WW1. To think that he survived Gallipoli and Europe is amazing but he also left detailed diaries of his time there which are the only links I have to what sort of a person he was. He is buried in a cemetery in Mildura where he died aged 60.
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He was certainly fortunate to survive both those battlefields. Being able to read his diaries would give you a real sense of him.
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A very moving post that illustrates the toll of war. My letter V post tomorrow discusses Vietnam War casualties. I agree with you about the memorial wall in Washington, DC — heartrending.
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I was pretty sure that would be your V story 😉 The thing that moved me most were the gifts and notes that were left, including a white teddy with a red heart round its neck saying “loved you then, love you now”. 😭
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Beautiful photos of those cemeteries honoring those who fought for us. Love the poppy wall. On one visit to my mothers hometown I discovered the woman who is called the poppy lady, lived and buried there.
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The poppy wall is one in our national war memorial with the names of all those who died. I always place a poppy against the names of family members. Interesting about the poppy lady.
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War memorials and war cemeteries highlight the great losses. I remember visiting a war cemetery in the Philippines as a child and being in awe of the number of white crosses which went on forever it seemed. I have just looked it up https://www.abmc.gov/Manila “The Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines occupies 152 acres on a prominent plateau, visible at a distance from the east, south and west. It contains the largest number of graves of our military dead of World War II, a total of 16,859, most of whom lost their lives in operations in New Guinea and the Philippines.” It wasn’t my misremembering – it was indeed vast.
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That certainly sounds huge. Very sobering.
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It’s sad that there are so many war graves around the world Pauleen. This was interesting to see
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Tragic to think of those lost generations isn’t it?
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Sad and tragic. So many lives lost to wars.
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It is truly shocking and those cemeteries really bring it home.
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A very moving tribute to the men and women who gave their lives for their country – also an imaginative title for the tricky X letter
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X can be a real challenge can’t it.
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