Bloodstains of sacrifice recalled in Murray Bridge on Remembrance Day 2022
Pastor Paul Calnan has echoed the words of a long-dead prime minister at a service at the city’s war memorial.
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“Our heritage, our free institutions of government – all that we hold dear – are handed back into our keeping stained with the blood of sacrifice.”
So said Prime Minister Billy Hughes in 1919, shortly before the first Remembrance Day.
His words were recalled by Lutheran Pastor Paul Calnan at Murray Bridge’s war memorial on Friday, as about 100 people gathered to commemorate the wartime sacrifices made by generations of Australians.
Mr Calnan paid tribute to those whose blood had stained the valleys and ridges of Gallipoli, the deserts of North Africa, the jungles of Vietnam and a dozen more battlefields.
He remembered those whose blood had been spilled in Singaporean prisons, European skies, oceans around the world, and even on Australian soil as a result of training accidents.
He honoured “those who may have won the war abroad but lost the battle at home, through mental illness, through addiction and suicide”.
“Today, we remember them all.”
Greg O’Brien, representing Murray Bridge Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital, said observing Remembrance Day remained as important as it was 103 years ago.
“Every year since 1918 we’ve gathered on this day, at this time, to remember those who’ve fallen in our name, in the Great War and in the conflicts since,” he said.
“We owe it to those who gave their lives, the families who mourn them, our generation and our nation’s future to remember the extraordinary service and sacrifice during the First World War and throughout the century since.”
Or, as Mr Hughes promised: “Surely not only we, their fellow citizens, but Australians throughout the ages, will treasure forever the memories of those glorious men to whom the Commonwealth owes so much, and will guard with resolute determination the privileges for which they fought and suffered.”
Representatives of 13 clubs and community organisations laid wreaths in front of the memorial at Sturt Reserve during Friday morning’s service, and the crowd paused for a minute’s silence.
A trumpet rang out as the sun shone on the flowers on Wharf Hill.
