Thirty years ago, the way we thought of our war dead changed. It's sometimes hard to pinpoint exact moments of change but in this case, not so difficult. On Remembrance Day in 1993, a tradition - a new way of remembering our war dead - became apparent.
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Nine days earlier, on November 2, the remains of an unknown Australian soldier were exhumed from Plot III, Row M, Grave 13 in the endless rows at the war cemetery near the village of Villers-Bretonneux in northern France.
On November 11, he was reburied at the Australian War Memorial.
It prompted ordinary Australians to walk forward and place single paper Remembrance Day poppies alongside individual names on the Roll of Honour at the memorial.
It started a tradition which continues to this day.
It is a good tradition.
It was as though ordinary people were reaching out to touch those ordinary people who had made the ultimate sacrifice on their behalf. It felt like a catharsis, a national purging of grief.
On his return to Australia, the body of the unknown soldier had lain in state at Old Parliament House, and there, too, individual flowers were laid.
There are many ways of remembering wars. There is a bombastic way of celebrating great victories. This way consists of generals and statues with scarce a mention of the foot soldiers who did the fighting and the dying.
The first known war memorial did precisely that. Trajan's Column in Rome, built 2000 years ago, celebrates Roman victory. In Trafalgar Square in London, Admiral Horatio Nelson peers grandly from his column in celebration of the British victory at sea over France.
But there is another way of remembering war - and that is to remember those who died far from home, in mud and blood, or in icy water, or in burning aircraft.
The Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier in Canberra is just such a memorial. The "soldier" in the title is now taken to mean people from all the services - those of land, sea and air. We remember them all.
And we should think about their deaths.
It is right to celebrate heroism, particularly heroism in a just cause. But it is right, too, to remember heroism implies danger and suffering.
We should not let the former cloud the latter. Wars are not glorious events. To glorify war without remembering the pain is to be untruthful.
A hint of the reality of war appears on our television screens every night, whether it be the suffering which followed the massacre of people in Israel or the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. War is a horrible, bloody business.
That moment 30 years ago when ordinary Australians stepped forward with their paper poppies and placed them beside individual names in the war memorial marked a great recognition of the sacrifice of ordinary people in the greater cause.
It was a spontaneous outburst of feeling. The prime minister at the time, Paul Keating, captured the moment (as he was so adept at doing).
"He is all of them. And he is one of us," he said at the reburial of the unknown soldier.
The need to acknowledge the sacrifice and suffering of our servicemen and women was clearly some sort of deep national need. The people who stepped forth with poppies were not glorifying war. They were honouring its victims.
If only we could know what those victims would say back. It might be "never again".
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