Politicians Lay Wreaths While the Dead Stay Dead

Premier Roger Cook, Opposition Leader Basil Zempilas, Federal Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy, Liberal Senator Michaela Cash and Labor Senator Dorinda Cox all laid wreaths at Kings Park in Perth on Wednesday, with the Governor, Chris Dawson, beside them and a lone bagpiper playing. Ten naval personnel from the submarine USS Colorado, in Western Australia as part of the AUKUS pact, stood in the crowd too. The people who send soldiers to war and the people who sell it to them lined up together, shoulder to shoulder, in front of the dead.

Who Pays the Bill

The numbers the ceremony itself supplied are plain. It's 108 years since the armistice ended the First World War, according to Returned & Services League of Australia WA chief executive Stephen Barton, and the war "claimed the lives of over 60,000 Australians." His words: "No street, no town, no suburb was untouched by grief or loss." Nobody in a position to start those wars paid that bill. Streets, towns and suburbs did.

RSL WA president Duncan Anderson, who served in Afghanistan, gave the memorial address and described what a flag at half mast does to him. "I recall the visceral feeling in the depths of my stomach on waking up and seeing yet another flag at half mast," he said. He added that the flag still makes him "pause and look twice." That's a man describing what an institution's decisions do to a body. The decision gets made far away, and the stomach is where it lands.

The Ones Who Actually Remember

No veterans remain from World War I. Fewer than 50 World War II veterans are left in WA. Among them is 101-year-old Robert Taylor, known to former shipmates as "one-shot Bob." He enlisted in 1943, 83 years ago, as soon as he turned 18. "I didn't fancy the army," he said. He served as an able seaman in the Philippines, Borneo and New Guinea. On a mine sweeper he was ordered to man a machine gun he'd never been trained to use and shoot a floating mine. "I was just a lookout but I suppose because I was the only one there, they said 'man that gun and shoot that mine'," he said. "I didn't know what to do — I just grabbed it and only one bullet went." The bullet hit. "That was a fluke," he said. "I've had a very lucky life." The chain of command handed an untrained teenager a gun and a live hazard, and survival came down to luck.

What People Actually Did

Outside the official program, ordinary people carried the day. Four-year-old twins Margot and Kit Dawson each held a poppy until the end, then placed them among the wreaths. Their father Gary said he has brought them every year since they were born. "I just feel it's important that the youngsters understand as well," he said. In Harvey, resident Kathy Chambers said her father and others in the region fought in World War II while her grandfather served in World War I. "This is a special day to me," she said. In Bunbury, community members laid wreaths while the Last Post and Rouse played, and RSL sub-branch president Shaun Thomas said, "We respect everyone who has taken the time to come today and remember those who have fallen and our men and women who served." Gatherings ran across the State, from the Pilbara to Albany. Nobody ordered that grief. People showed up for each other, unpaid and unmanaged.

What They're Calling Remembrance

Then came the money. WA Veterans Minister Hannah Beazley announced $1.1 million to support ex-service organisations across the State to improve veteran facilities, memorials and places of commemoration. "Supporting new and existing memorial infrastructure will help to preserve WA's wartime heritage," she said, "making sure that they, and the sacrifices they made, will never be forgotten."

Read that again. The funding goes to memorials and places of commemoration. Stone and facilities. The state that spent those lives is now spending to preserve their heritage, and the ten USS Colorado sailors in the crowd are a reminder that the machinery producing the next round of names is already docked in WA under the AUKUS pact. The memorial gets the grant. The next generation of flags at half mast gets the pact.