By MATT NICHOLLS
THE trickling of the fountain’s water was the only sound in Central Park at 11am on Monday as Armidale paused for Remembrance Day.
More than 100 people gathered for the service, paying tribute to Australian men and women who served their country overseas as part of the military services.
Guest speaker Flight Lieutenant Michael Spierings summed it up best when he said it was not a time to glorify war, but to honour and remember those that served.
“More than 102,000 Australians have been killed in service and it is our duty to acknowledge the ultimate sacrifice they paid,” he said.
Tears were shed as the Last Post was played and wreaths laid, while the presence of students from St Mary’s Primary School added to the theatre of the service.
Armidale RSL sub-branch president Bob Holloway was impressed with the crowd, well up on previous years.
“I think having the students there certainly added to it,” he said.
“It would be good to have more school children here next year.”
The Armidale School held its own service to acknowledge those who died at war.
It particularly paid tribute to the 97 former students and four staff who had given their lives in various conflicts, from 1901 in the Boer War to Afghanistan in 2008.
The life and sacrifice of one, Lieutenant Cecil Valentine Blomfield, who was killed in the Second Battle of the Somme on 31 August 1918, was acknowledged to represent his 100 fellow fallen TAS servicemen, in a tribute by prefect Sam Doyle in the War Memorial Assembly Hall.
Students then moved outside for the official ceremony, which was attended by all students and staff.
“We remember all of them, and their sacrifice, here today. Lest we forget,” said student Benjamin Mulligan, who also read a poem Requiescant Armidaliensis written by Old Boy ‘R.B.’ – possibly Lieutenant R.V. Blomfield – and published in the school magazine The Armidalian in December 1918:
“Those men who from this school of ours have gone
Are not they all the very living fount
Where those of us whose lives have just begun
May learn the sacrifice of love? We count
Them sleeping – Nay! Not sleeping e’en,
While memory shows the present what hath been.”
