COVID restricted crowds for Remembrance Day, but emotions run high

COVID may have kept numbers down at Adelaide’s Remembrance Day ceremonies – but it didn’t change how people felt.

Fewer than 100 schoolchildren and officials gathered at COVID-19 restricted ceremony at West Terrace AIF cemetery for Remembrance Day, but they were joined by 4167 of those who shall not grow old.

At 11am the privileged 100 joined the fallen in silence to mark the time and day in 1918 when WWI ended.

The normally larger ceremony at the National War Memorial on North Tce was closed to the public, but Adelaide Cemeteries CEO Robert Pitt presided over the West Tce event attended by schoolchildren, veterans of past conflicts and those currently serving.

A small group of people for the Remembrance Day ceremony at the War Memorial North Tce. Picture: Tom Huntley

The main address was delivered by Indigenous leader Flight Lieutenant Steven Warrior, an Indigenous Liaison Officer in the RAAF, with the contribution of Aboriginal servicemen and women a focus this year.

He remembered them as: “Men and women who are displaced and disconnected from culture, not classed as citizens but counted by authorities as among the fauna and flora’’.

Among the guests of honour were WWII veterans including RAAF telephone operator Thelma Zimmerman, who was reunited with her father George Kinsman at his WWI returned serviceman’s gravesite.

World War 2 veteran Thelma Zimmerman at her father’s grave in the AIF section of West Terrace Cemetery. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

Wreaths placed at the War Memorial on North Tce. Picture: Tom Huntley

She remembered being in her teens when her father died, in 1939, and in her fifties when her WWII veteran husband died.

“We said goodbye to dad eighty years ago, and my husband when I was 53, but you have to get up each day and live your life because nothing cancels that,’’ she explained.

Jack Thomas marks the beginning of November each year with mixed emotions; Remembrance Day closely preceded by his birthday, this year his one hundredth.

Al Kidney from the ADF plays the Last Post during the Service of Remembrance in the West Terrace Cemetery. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

The WWII veteran survived two years of slave labour on the Myanmar/Thai Railway and later in the coal mines under the Sea of Japan, but now speaks of global hope and joy.

“I am absolutely surrounded by young people these days at my nursing home, and my carers they come from all the ends of the earth, from Africa, India and Asia,” he said.

“They are young, they are beautiful, they are respectful and I have much pleasure in their company. I could not be happier.”

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