What does it mean to say Lest we forget? The ode to the fallen that we recite on this day each year ends with those three words. When the monuments to the fallen were put up across our nation, those words were carved on them in stone. ‘Lest’ is an old word, almost lost to our language today. It means ‘for fear that’ we forget. This monument, this ceremony, this day exists lest we forget. These are not soft words. They are not a vague promise that we mumble on this day each year so that, our remembrance duty done, we can move on with our lives. There is a reason they are carved in stone. These words take us by the shoulders and shake us. They are history’s index finger pushed into our chests, a reminder of our duty as the beneficiaries of their bravery that we must never forget them.

We must never forget that those who died in that noble service did so for a reason. We must also never forget that the names listed on our memorials were real people who shared much the same hopes and dreams for the future that we do today. Real people who loved and were loved and whose loss brought a universe of pain for those they left behind. Each honoured name of the fallen inscribed in memory here was an unspeakable tragedy and these are just some of the 120,000 Australians we honour today.

Captain Ivor Margetts was one of those. A young teacher from Hobart, Margetts landed at Gallipoli with the 12 th Battalion on this day 107 years ago. He led his men heroically up those famous cliffs and brought them through that day and the months that followed. He survived Gallipoli only to be killed by the terrible shellfire of Pozieres in 1916. In the Red Cross report on his death, one of his men wrote. ‘He was the best man going. The men loved him. I cried like a kid when I heard he was gone. I think he went because he was too good for the beastliness of war.’

You will not find the name of Mrs Minnie Viles of Townsville on any war memorial, but the war took much more from her than her life. In June of 1917 she received the news that both her sons were posted missing at the battle of Messines. She wrote to the army weekly begging for news of her sons until almost six months later, the word came that they had both been killed in action. Her agony would never end. There would be no funerals, no graves and no chance for her to say goodbye Keith and Frank, her ‘darling boys’ as she called them in her letters. Her final letter reads ‘Perhaps you could get me some word of my darling boys, all that we know is both ‘killed in action, 7 th of June 1917’. I have written again and again …….but so far no reply from anyone and really I feel sometimes as if my reason will go.’

This day exists lest we forget the pain and anguish of loss that wars bring, the terrible toll in lives lost and ruined and the nobility of their sacrifice. We are here lest we forget what they bought for us with their blood and tears – peace and freedom from tyranny. Let us not doubt as Europe is once more plunged into war, that the fight for freedom and peace is any less important now than it was in 1915 or at any time in history.

We must not forget that the freedoms we enjoy rest upon the sacrifices of the men and women we honour today and that we pledge not to forget today. We who are the beneficiaries of their sacrifice owe them not only a duty to remember their sacrifice, but the duty to sustain and cherish the freedoms they fought for and to defend them ourselves if necessary. It is indeed hard to imagine here on this peaceful autumn day that there could be anything but lasting peace in Australia. But we should also remember that those who gathered here on Anzac Day in 1939 believed that as well.

So today, those words – lest we forget – should shake us from complacency, should call to mind the loss and tragedy of lives cut short, should fill us with gratitude for their noble sacrifice and should inspire us alike to our duty to cherish and guard peace and freedom.

Lest we forget

ANZAC Day address: by Mr Craig Deayton – at The Cenotaph, Lenah Valley RSL
Source: Mr Craig Deayton, 25 April 2022

...with thanks.