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Page 1 | Page 2 When I was a child growing up in country Australia in the late 1950s, I knew quite a bit about a world war that had only finished a mere decade ago. Its scars were still around me with many older children without fathers, as well as intermittent food and petrol (gas) shortages. I also became quite aware of WW1, as Anzac Day, (the Australian equivalent to Memorial Day) always plays a prominent part in every Australian's upbringing... Dawn breaks and the evocative, haunting sound of the bugle plays the "Last Post" every Anzac Day, at every WW1 Cenotaph (memorial) in every city and every town across the country... and a returned serviceman takes the duty of reciting Binyon's Ode...

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them Lest we forget.

The silent tears from big, brawny sunburnt men, old and young, always made a small skinny kid wonder what on earth these men and woman went through. In those days, we still also had many surviving gladiators left from World War 1 including some of my older relatives. What was this about, I wondered?

Many years later in 1970, on a night stinking of diesel fumes and cloying wet tropical humidity, I opened the log book in the Free World Signal Centre in Cholon, (Saigon), South Vietnam, as my first night as deputy shift commander for 110 Signal Squadron (Australian Army). The book fell open to my brother's report from a few years previously, when he also was shift commander in the same centre during the fierce Tet Offensive battle in Saigon in 68. Serendipity?
Perhaps. What was this about, I wondered?

Many years later again, on a cold April dawn at Battersea Park in London, I attended my first ever Anzac Day Memorial Service as a returned soldier. Thousands and thousands of young Australians, New Zealanders, British and many more nationalities had descended on the park. The haunting, crystal clear sound of the Last Post rang out in the soft darkness. In the hushed silence, the birds waking around us in a cathedral of tree branches gave the only sound in a city of 8 million people. Tears...gently laid flowers... messages to uncles, fathers, grandparents and great grandparents... enormous reverence and impermeable sadness... At last I knew exactly what this was about.

It was not about glorifying war. It was about family. It was about mateship, bravery and kindness. It was about remembering above all, what is good about humanity.

Our parents and ancestors, as young men and woman so many years ago, answered the call of our countries, not the call from our politicians. They did not know, nor particularly care, about the political correctness of having a choice of going to battle - or who they were to fight. They fought for what they believed in, and history, with its 20/20 hindsight, focuses us on the horrific futility and utter waste that war brings. So many incredibly brave young men and woman, answering in so many ways, and in so many lands, the call to arms.
A quiet determination to do their job - whatever it took.

Maybe this is why, on a cold April morning in 2002, many years on from the jungles of South East Asia, and 12 thousand miles away from my birthplace, I finally understood... "What is this about?"

Our older generation is very quick to condemn our younger people, but to the thousands of young people around me that morning, I know they intuitively knew that this was about remembrance of friendship and family, and a celebration of all the enduring things that are good and noble about the human spirit.

Our future - and our past - is about our young people. In all of history it is they that have always borne the brunt of war.

Battlefields Remembered is a very special part of the Ancestor Travel family, and we hope that you can use us to retrace the footsteps of that family member who, whether it be WW1, WW2, or any other conflict - either modern and ancient, laid down their lives in battle.

Lest we forget.