Villers-Bretonneux Australian National Memorial

The Australian National Memorial, located at Villers-Bretonneux, in the Somme department of France, is the main memorial to Australian military personnel killed on the Western Front during the First World War, especially those who have no known grave.

Following the end of the war, Villers-Bretonneux was proposed as the site for a memorial to honour the Australian soldiers who had fought on the Western Front. The town held special significance because of the role played by Australian forces in the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux: After its capture by the Germans on 24^th April 1918, the town was retaken the following morning following a determined counterattack by two Australian brigades. Brigadier-General George Grogan, of the British 23^rd Brigade, later called it “perhaps the greatest individual feat of the war - the successful counterattack by night across unknown and difficult ground, at a few hours’ notice, by the Australian soldier.”

The Australian government accepted the proposal to build the monument in 1923, and a design competition was held in 1925. It was exclusively open to Australian veterans and their parents, and all entries had to use only stone quarried in Australia. Although Melbourne architect William Lucas won the competition, the project was suspended in 1930, mainly due to the high costs during the Great Depression. After a visit to Australia by Sir Fabian Ware, head of the Imperial War Graves Commission, in 1935, the project was revived, using French stone and a more affordable design by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

Construction of the memorial began in 1936, within the Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery, which Lutyens had also designed. The last of the great memorials to the missing of the First World War to have been built, it was officially unveiled by King George VI on 22^nd July 1938, just over a year before the outbreak of the Second World War. During the Battle of France in 1940, the memorial was used as an observation post by the French and was extensively damaged by German aircraft and ground fire. Although repairs were carried out after the war, some scarring can still be seen today.

The memorial consists of a tower surrounded by walls and panels on which the names of the missing are engraved, in order of battalion, then alphabetically under rank. Although it originally listed the names of 10,982 men, the remains of some of them have since been identified. When this happens, they are given an individual headstone in the cemetery where they are buried, while their name is removed from the memorial. The Australian National Memorial currently commemorates over 10,700 soldiers of the Australian Imperial Force who were killed on the Western Front between 1916 and 1918 and who still have no known grave.

Every year on 25^th April, an Anzac Day Dawn Service is conducted at the memorial by the Australian Government Department of Veterans' Affairs. The date has added significance because it was on 25^th April 1918 - three years to the day from the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli, Turkey - that Australian troops recaptured Villers-Bretonneux from the Germans. During the 2018 service, the Sir John Monash Centre was unveiled directly behind the memorial to tell the story of Australia’s involvement on the Western Front during the First World War through personal diaries, letters and service records of the men who served.