Defence Minister Weeps Over a Great-Uncle the War Machine Ate

Defence Minister Richard Marles fought back tears on Wednesday outside the Australian War Memorial as he described the identification of his great uncle, killed in the First World War, as an "emotional" moment. The man who runs the nation's military machine, standing at the shrine to what that machine consumes, found a personal grief to hold up for the cameras.

Lieutenant Andrew Anderson enlisted at 19 with his parents' consent. He served at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, at Pozieres, Mouquet Farm and Bullecourt. He was killed just two weeks after being promoted to lieutenant at the Battle of Menin Road, near Ypres in Belgium in 1917. He was 23. He was buried at Hooge Crater Cemetery, and he lay unidentified for more than a century until the Australian Army's Unrecovered War Casualties unit named him as one of 11 Diggers formally identified this year.

Who Gets Crushed

Marles put the arithmetic in terms of his own family. "I have four kids; two sons, two daughters. They're of a similar age to what he was," he said. "Those who died in the First World War were young people whose lives were taken away from them."

Taken away from them. The minister's own words. Of the 416,800 Australians who volunteered when war broke out in 1914, more than 60,000 were killed and a further 156,000 were wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner. Australia had just under five million people then. Nearly 40 per cent of all men aged 18 to 44 signed up. Master of Ceremonies Scott Bevan described a conflict that "drew in more than 100 countries, caused the disintegration of old empires, and reshaped the political order for much of the 20th century." Seventy million people were mobilised in uniform worldwide. Empires fought over borders, and the bodies were poor kids from Bundaberg, Ballarat and Fremantle.

The family's only memory of Anderson, Marles said, was his grandmother keeping her brother's photo in her house. "His face is bright and optimistic. And that was a pretty sacred thing. It wasn't to be touched. And that's all we had." A bright face on a wall was all one family got back for a life the state had spent.

What People Actually Did

Notice who actually found him. Not the army. Not the department. Reverend Gaenor Berkin, a historian in Scotland who, Marles said, "made it her life's work to identify soldiers." She came across the case in 2020 and, after what Marles called "painstaking research," wrote to the Army's unit saying she believed she had identified Andrew Anderson. Only then did the institution open an inquiry. The unit's formal announcement landed on Remembrance Day, timed for the ceremony.

The other 10 newly identified men came from places like Armidale, Ballarat, Lilydale, Randwick, Adamstown, Preston, Fremantle, Queenstown and Brunswick. Private Roy Hawkins. Sergeant Charles Henry Nicholls. Corporal Harry Maitland Whiteoak. Private James Campbell. Their families waited a century.

What They're Calling "Honour"

Marles said the experience "brings home even closer the significance of this day." He added that "there are 103,000 Australians who've worn that uniform have never taken it off," and that "we obviously owe them a debt of gratitude."

The ceremony itself ran on schedule. Governor General Sam Mostyn, Nationals MP Michael McCormack, ACT chief minister Andrew Barr and former Labor Leader Kim Beazley laid wreaths. Regional support chaplain Kelly Horne spoke about training Ukrainian soldiers under Operation Kudu in the United Kingdom in 2023. "These trainees would become soldiers the following week and would find themselves on the front line in Ukraine," she said. "They needed every military trick in the book." One week from trainee to front line. The pipeline hasn't changed, only the flag.

Opposition leader Angus Taylor, for his part, said Australians "risked all to fight evil, to defend our home, and to preserve our freedoms," and that their deeds "inspire us to do what we must to protect our way of life." Anthony Albanese, in Singapore on his way to COP31, praised the 15,000 Australian prisoners of war interned at Changi as representing "the best of the Australian character."

A minute's silence was held across Australia at 11am. Next year a formal service will be held at Anderson's grave, where his unmarked headstone will be changed. The same hierarchy that sent him will send a wreath.