Known Soldiers: The Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial

Australia brought home its Unknown Soldier in 1993, but long before that it had its 'known soldiers': the 100, 000 names on the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial. The idea for the Roll of Honour seems to have sprung from the head of Charles Bean, Australia's official correspondent and later official historian for the First World War. It was a simple idea - a list of all the dead from the war - which soon turned out to be very complicated. This paper will examine the origins and precursors of the Roll of Honour, and trace the doubts and arguments of the interwar years when questions about the Roll's content, structure and form forced its proponents to analyse more closely its purpose and meaning. It will discuss the abandonment of original intentions in the rush to give the Roll physical form in the 1950s, and the Roll as a living monument, given life by new rituals and arguments. Today the Roll of Honour is seen by many as sacred space, whose boundaries continue to be keenly contested.