Tribute: Eulogy for the Unknown Australian Soldier

The original unknown soldier was entombed on 11 November 1920 in Westminster Abbey, London. Dedicated to the unknown soldier's services and to the memories of all soldiers who had been killed in war, his body was one of four recovered from battlefields in Britain, the Somme, Aisne, Arras, and Ypres.

The soldier who was assumed to have been British, could have been Australian, Canadian or New Zealand, but was intended to represent all the young British Empire men killed during the First World War. An unknown French soldier was also buried on the same date under the Arc de Triomphe and other allied nations later also entombed unknown soldiers of their own.

Tony Abbott and his wife Margie lay floral tributes at the Tomb of The Unknown Soldier on Anzac Day 2013 at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

Unknown Australian Soldier

After decades of deliberation and debate to honour an unknown Australian soldier, Australia's political military and commemorative leadership finally made the decision in 1993, that one would finally be brought back home to Australia.

Men of the 9th Battalion Australian Imperial Force at an unknown location in Gallipoli. The men of the 9th often preferred to wear pith helmets rather than the slouch hat.

To mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the First World War, the unknown Australian soldier's body was recovered from the Adelaide Cemetery in France and flown back to Australia. He first laid in state in King's Hall in Old Parliament House, Canberra but was then moved to rest in the Hall of Memory inside the Australian War Memorial on 11 November 1993. Buried in a Tasmanian blackwood coffin with a bayonet, a sprig of wattle and scattered soil from the Pozières battlefield, he represents all Australians who have been killed in war.

The gun carriage carrying the Unknown Soldier entering the parade ground of the Australian War Memorial. This picture was on the Gold Coast Bulletin’s front page following the ceremony (Pic by Ray Strange)

Eulogy for the Unknown Australian Soldier

The elected Australian Prime Minister at the time, Paul Keating was invited to deliver a eulogy for the Unknown Australian Soldier. Written by Keating himself with his speech writer Don Watson, it was a towering speech that recognised the sacrifice of this soldier and his link to the 62,000 other souls who sacrificed their lives for who we are today. The incredibly moving commemorative address was later immortalised in the halls of the Australian War Memorial and reads:

Paul Keating at the site of the Unknown Australian Soldier Australian War Memorial in Canberra

"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've 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 all-consuming, 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 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, 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.

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, to show courage, to be bold as well as resilient, to believe in ourselves, to stick together.

Anzac troops stand in a trench at Gallipoli during World War I.

The Unknown Australian Soldier we inter today was one of those who by his deeds 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 surely at the heart of the ANZAC, the Australian legend which emerged from the war. It is a legend not of sweeping military victories so much as triumphs against the odds, of courage and ingenuity in adversity. It is a legend of free and independent spirits whose discipline derived less from military formalities and customs than from the bonds of mateship and the demands of necessity.

It is a democratic tradition, the tradition in which Australians have gone to war ever since.

This Unknown Australian is not interred here to glorify war over peace; or to assert a soldier's character above a civilian's; or one race or one nation or one religion above another; or men above women; or the war in which he fought and died above any other war; or of one generation above any that has or will come later.

The Unknown Soldier honours the memory of all those men and women who laid down their lives for Australia.

His tomb is a reminder of what we have lost in war and what we have gained.

We have lost more than 100,000 lives, and with them all their love of this country and all their hope and energy.

But we have gained a legend: a story of bravery and sacrifice and, with it, a deeper faith in ourselves and our democracy, and a deeper understanding of what it means to be Australian.

It is not too much to hope, therefore, that this Unknown Australian Soldier might continue to serve his country - he might enshrine a nation's love of peace and remind us that in the sacrifice of the men and women whose names are recorded here there is faith enough for all of us."

The Hon. P.J. Keating MP

Prime Minister of Australia

Lest we forget.

By Kirsten Jakubenko

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