MORE than a century has passed since the guns on the Western Front famously fell silent after four years of fighting as Germany sought an armistice that ultimately allowed for the end of World War I.
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As ANZAC Day has become a day on which we rightly commemorate service, Remembrance Day is one in which we hold the memory of those who made such enormous sacrifice dear.
The Australian War Memorial estimates between nine and 13 million died by the end of the so-called Great War, with up to a third resting without a known grave.
Known and unknown, those who died in the first modern world conflict have earned at least a moment's contemplation all these decades later. That moment is worth contemplating the cost of war paid by so many and how it has transformed the world in which we live.
The horror of World War II led the change from Armistice Day to Remembrance Day in Australia and England, broadening the significance of November 11 to incorporate the memory of all war dead.
It is difficult to comprehend exactly how different the world was before World War I reshaped a generation so brutally. While much has changed in the years since, war remains a part of our modern world along with its sacrifice, displacement and devastation.
With luck, the valour displayed by those who have served will one day be surplus to requirements and only memorials like Newcastle's Gardner Memorial, which historian David Dial says is regarded as the first soldier memorial in our nation, will testify to the bravery and selflessness it demanded.
That day has not yet come, and will perhaps forever lie out of reach unless we actively remember and respect the cost of failing to strive for peace that has been illustrated so vividly and expensively in our national and global past.
After 100 years, that is part of the legacy of those whose lives were cut short. Today the least we can do is pause to remember the sacrifices of those who served a generation ago. Through remembering, perhaps we can assure that no more will confront the same horrors they so bravely did.
There are three words that encapsulate this responsibility to recall, indissoluble with two days on our national calendar. Like any prayer, they are worth considering at length rather than repeating by rote: lest we forget.
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