They were then returned to Australia, spending another three days lying in state at Old Parliament House in Canberra. Placed in a simple Tasmanian blackwood coffin, the remains lay in state at Villers-Bretonneux in France and at Menin Gate at Ypres in Belgium. Except for their nationality, they could not be identified, and were buried beneath headstones bearing the words ‘An Australian soldier of the Great War, known unto God. He was one of the 23,000 Australians killed in the war to have no known grave. The story began earlier that month when the remains of an Australian soldier who died in the First World War were exhumed from a military cemetery in France. The powerful words of the Eulogy delivered by then Prime Minister Paul Keating on 11 November 1993 at the entombing of the Unknown Australian Soldier. One of the 100,000 Australians who died in wars this century. one of the 60,000 Australians who died on foreign soil. he was one of the 45,000 Australians who died on the Western Front. We will never know who this Australian was. We do not know where he was born, nor precisely how he died. We do not know this Australian’s name and we never will.
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