Lest we Forget. A Visit to the Mandurah War Memorial.

As today we commemorate Anzac Day, I would like to feature the War Memorial we visited a few days ago in Mandurah. It was built to honor the men and women who gave their lives and those who survived the horrors of war.

I have never lived through a war nor would I ever wish to experience it. I remember my grandmother telling me about how her family left all their belongings and crossed provinces by foot to avoid being killed by the Japanese in World War II. She told me they hid for days under dried banana leaves rotting in road gutters and drank muddy water in order to survive. I am thankful she's alive to share with me the horrors she went through. I shudder at the thought of war and I can only pray that we and our children live without it.

Here is a poem carved on the pillars of the Mandurah War Memorial. It is a bittersweet reminder of the sacrifice given for us to enjoy the Australia we know today. Something that reminds me of all I should be thankful for...

Of all WE should be thankful for.

Lest we forget.

I am the Unknown Soldier...

A Naval commander…

I was an Army private…

An Air Force bombardier…

I am proud to be Australian.

No man knows me.

No name marks my tomb, for I am every Australian serviceman.

The clerk who sent your phone bill…

The mechanic in the corner garage…

The med student at graduation…

The baker who brought you bread.

I was your mate.

The kid across the road...

I died for a cause I held just in the service of my land

That you and yours may say in freedom.

I fought in the frozen mud of the Somme…

In a blazing destroyer exploding in the North Sea.

I crouched in a shallow trench on that hell of exposed beaches...

Steeply rising foothills bare of cover…

A landscape pockmarked with war’s inevitable litter…

Piles of stores… equipment… ammunition…

And the weird contortions of death sculpted in Australian flesh.

I saw the going down of the sun on that first ANZAC day…

The chaotic maelstrom of Australia’s blooding.