Tomorrow, I will join tens of thousands of Australians, in hundreds of locations around Australia and beyond, to participate in an ANZAC Day dawn service The ANZAC Day Dawn Service evokes deep feelings that go beyond mere national pride – feelings that are often hard to define. It’s not a celebration of war or military prowess, but rather a solemn remembrance of tens of thousands of individual acts of self-sacrifice for what each thought would be for the greater good.
If you travel the great cities of the world you will see many monuments honouring great military leaders. But not in Australia; the only one I know of is the statue of General Monash in Melbourne, himself a citizen soldier, and arguably the best general of World War 1. But in suburbs and country towns everywhere stands the image of the ubiquitous digger – the unnamed man who represents all those hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women who ‘did their bit’. It is their memory we honour and for whom we give thanks to God.