Why Europe can never forget the Australians who fought in World War I

IT’S easy to see why people who live in areas of Europe affected by World War I are so aware of their history.

Why Anzacs will not be forgotten

IT’S easy to see why people who live in areas of Europe affected by World War I are so aware of their history. On areas that were once part of the Western Front, the reminders are everywhere.

They are there at the Menin Gate, at Ypres in Belgium – a large monument at the entrance to the town obliterated in World War I – its every surface covered by thousands of names of soldiers whose bodies were never found. Every day at 8pm, regardless of the weather, the Last Post is sounded and heads are bowed to remember those who fell.

The reminders are there when a local tour guide is at home doing renovations at a township near Albert, in France, and the excavator unearths the bodies of five German soldiers buried in battle.

The shocking power and horror of the war literally is just below the surface. Another guide tells the story of three workers who were blown up by a shell as recently as earlier this year at Ypres. They were trying to open it with a hammer and chisel. Two were killed and another seriously injured in the huge explosion. It was so massive that the only remains they found of one of the victims was his liver – on a roof nearby.

This explains why, among the hundreds of immaculately kept war cemeteries dotted thought the countryside, most of the gravestones carry the inscription “An Australian Soldier of The Great War” and under an engraved cross “Known Unto God”. In some cemeteries, 80 per cent of the tombstones honour unknown soldiers.

The battles were so fierce and the scale of destruction so great that whole towns were blasted off the map. In one push 4 million shells rained down on soldiers on both sides – in just one week.

So many who died were blown to pieces or lost in the mud.

As my wife and I travelled through Belgium and France following the school choir group on their tour through the Western Front in April, we saw so many sights and read so many words that made us stop and consider the huge cost of war. The stories of bravery, the senseless waste of life and incredible scale of destruction.

The museums don’t try to hide the horror of the battles. It’s confronting and overwhelming.

There have been glimmers of hope, too. There is the moving account of the 1914 Christmas truce in The Flanders Fields Museum at Ypres, where soldiers from opposing sides heard each other singing carols and for a few hours shared stories, took photographs and even played soccer with their enemy.

Such fraternising with the enemy was forbidden after that. For how could you shoot to kill someone if you had seen their photos of loved ones, shared a drink and a smoke and laughed at their jokes?

There is hope too in the tears of an ageing mayor at Pozieres, who explains how grateful he is to the Anzacs who defended his town: “Without Australians we wouldn’t be here.”

Most Australians will pause today to remember the 100th anniversary of World War I.

If you do, be thankful – that we live in a country and age where war on such a scale is inconceivable. Be proud of your country and the respect it enjoys on the other side of the world, thanks to fellow Australians who gave so much so far from home.

Originally published as Why Europe can never forget the Australians who fought in World War I