Mourning and commemoration in Australia : the case of Sir W. T. Bridges and the unknown Australian soldier

The bodies of only two of 60,000 Australians who died in the Great War have been repatriated. The first - Sir W. l Bridges - is known; the other is unknown: the body of an unknown Australian soldier was returned in 1993 and entombed in the Australian War Memorial. The return of each offers insight into the ways in which the experience of death in the Great War was changing modes of grief and commemoration. While Bridges' return allowed public expression of private grief under new and terrible circumstances, an evolving culture of commemoration in the Great War made the public celebration of the one, known, man largely incompatible with the private grief of thousands.