LEST WE FORGET
REMEMBRANCE DAY COMMEMORATIONS
FOR more than 25 years Bill Hills OAM has had the “privilege and honour” of MCing various military services in Toowoomba.
While he never served in the armed forces, his father was in the air force, and growing up he was surrounded by ex-servicemen.
Come Remembrance Day tomorrow, the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice of Compiegne - which ended World War I - Mr Hills will once again take up the microphone.
“It’s important mate. I feel very simply this - they gave their tomorrows so we could have today,” he said.
“We owe those people an enormous amount, for the privileges we’ve got and the freedoms we enjoy.
“I think its extremely important for us to come together to remember those who gave the supreme sacrifice, not only for them, but for their next of kins, their mums, their dads, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, whatever the case may be.”
The outbreak of war on August
4, 1914, was met with great enthusiasm in Australia.
When the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918, Toowoomba had lost 443 young men in the bloodiest fighting the world had seen to that date.
Their names are inscribed on the Mothers Memorial,
built after the war by the women grieving the loss of their sons.
Tomorrow’s Remembrance Day ceremony will begin at 10.30am. Wreathbearers are asked to be there by 10.15am.
The ceremony will include the passing of the Torch of Vigilance,
and Toowoomba’s town crier Kevin Howarth will join in an international cry for peace - a standard cry that all the town criers around the world will be performing this Remembrance Day.
At 4pm at the Mothers Memorial tomorrow, the Toowoomba
Caledonian Society Pipe band will join with pipers and pipe bands around the world will honour those who served with a playing of The Battle’s O’er, the tune composed a century ago to remember those who served and died.