The Australian "Unknown Soldier"

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. No enlargement.

We do not know this Australian’s name and we never will. We do not know his rank or battalion.

We do not know where he was born, nor precisely how he died ... We will never know who this Australian was ... he was one of the 45,000 Australians who died on the Western Front ... one of the 60,000 Australians who died on foreign soil.

One of the 100,000 Australians who died in wars this century. He is all of them. And he is one of us.

Australian Prime Minister 11 Nov 1993

ADELAIDE CEMETERY, VILLERS-BRETONNEUX Somme, France

Villers-Bretonneux is a town 16 kilometres east of Amiens and the Cemetery is situated west of the village on the north side of the main road from Amiens to St. Quentin.

Villers-Bretonneux became famous in 1918, when the German advance on Amiens ended in the capture of the village by their tanks and infantry on 23 April. On the following day, the 4th and 5th Australian Divisions, with units of the 8th and 18th Divisions, recaptured the whole of the village so that on Anzac Day it was back under Allied control. On 8 August 1918, the 2nd and 5th Australian Divisions advanced from its eastern outskirts in the Battle of Amiens. Adelaide Cemetery was begun early in June 1918 and used by the 2nd and 3rd Australian Divisions.

It continued in use until the Allies began their advance in mid August, by which time it contained 90 graves (the greater part of the present Plot I, Rows A to E). After the Armistice a large number of graves were brought into the cemetery from small graveyards and isolated positions on the north, west and south of Villers-Bretonneux and they were, without exception, those of men who died in the months from March to September 1918. Plot I was filled, Plot II was made almost entirely with graves from United Kingdom units, and Plot III almost entirely with Australian.

There are now 955 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 261 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to 4 casualties known, or believed to be buried among them. The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. On 2 November 1993, following a request by the Government of Australia, an unknown Australian soldier killed in the First World War was exhumed from Plot III, Row M, Grave 13, and is now buried in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

Notes. Some claim that as the body General Bridges was sent home it is wrong to say that the Unknown Australian Soldier was the only Australian KIA brought home. There are several debating points that I don't intend to go into here but the principal difference is that Bridges had been wounded and removed from the battlefield. He died on a hospital ship and was therefore classified as having "Died of Wounds". His body was buried for a short time, then exhumed and sent home.

He was given a State Funeral at St Paul's Cathedral in Melbourne and buried on 3 September 1915 on the slopes of Mount Pleasant, (overlooking Royal Military College, Duntroon, which he had founded) in a grave designed by the architect of Canberra, Walter Burley Griffin.

General Bridges grave is famous. It is the only permanent structure designed by Walter Burley Griffin that has ever been built in Canberra. The marble grave with its surrounding low wall sits on a ridge in the middle of the college, next to the walkway that links the old and new parts of the college.