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Australia's War 1939-1945 | Australians in war | World War 2 | War in the Pacific

World War I, 1914-1918, was the 'Great War', the 'war to end all wars'. In that conflict, the most important battleground was the 'Western Front' in France and Belgium where great battles were fought with names that were once household words in Australia - Fromelles, the Somme, Bullecourt, Messines, Passcshendaele, Dernancourt and Villers-Bretonneux. Of the more than 290,000 Australians who served in this theatre of war in the AIF, the Australian Imperial Force, 46,000 were either killed in action or died of their wounds. Dotted across the landscape of France and Belgium are hundreds of war cemeteries and memorials where these soldiers lie buried or where their names are listed among those thousands who have 'no known grave, the 'missing'. This website is dedicated to their memory and to those who served with them and returned to Australia, many of them wounded in body and spirit.