MEDIA RELEASE
The Returned & Services League of Australia (RSL) invites all Australians to pay their respects during Remembrance Day by pausing at 11am to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of our nation.
Ahead of Remembrance Day, Australians can show their support by buying a poppy through the RSL Poppy Appeal, and by attending a Remembrance Day service at a local RSL Sub-Branch. Services are free and everyone is welcome.
RSL Australia National President, Peter Tinley AM, said every act of remembrance matters.
“Paying your respects need not be grand. Stand in silence at 11am, wherever you are. Wear a poppy. Join your community at a local service. Each small act says something that matters: your service has not been forgotten,” Mr Tinley said.
When the nation falls silent tomorrow, it will remember the more than 103,000 Australians who have died in service, from Gallipoli and the Western Front to our more recent conflicts and peacekeeping operations. This year’s Remembrance Day also comes 25 years after Australians first deployed to Afghanistan, the nation’s longest war, in which nearly 40,000 Australians served.
The RSL is asking Australians to also remember those who came home from Afghanistan and have since lost their lives, the serving men and women who have died in training, and the families who carry their loss.
“Not every sacrifice is made on a battlefield. Those we’ve lost in training, and those who came home but are no longer with us, answered the same call to serve this country. At 11am tomorrow, I ask every Australian to stop and remember them,” Mr Tinley said.
Mr Tinley, a former Special Air Service Regiment officer who served in Afghanistan, will recite the Ode of Remembrance at the National Remembrance Day Ceremony at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
“When I speak the words of the Ode, I’ll be thinking of the people I served with in Afghanistan and the 47 Australians we lost to that war. I’ll be thinking of those who died in training, preparing to defend this country, and of every family with an empty chair at the table,” Mr Tinley said.
The ceremony will also mark 85 years since the Australian War Memorial opened on Remembrance Day in 1941, with the oldest wreath in the Memorial’s collection, first laid in 1934, to be laid once again. The RSL acknowledges and congratulates the Memorial on this milestone.