Professor Peter Monteath, Vice-President and Executive Dean, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, recently joined Prime Minister the Hon. Anthony Albanese MP and Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia His Excellency General the Honourable David Hurley AC DSC (Retd) as guest speakers at a service to mark the 20th anniversary of the Ex-POWs Memorial in Ballarat.

The Memorial contains the names of more than 35,000 soldiers, sailors and nurses inscribed on the 130-metre granite wall covering both World Wars, as well as the Boer War and Korean War.

Professor Monteath spoke about two POWs whose different stories serve “as a reminder that the POW experience was not defined by captivity alone”.

“The legacy of those men, representatives of what with good reason has been labelled Australia’s greatest generation, is in the recollection and affirmation of an instinctive philosophy. It was a philosophy that they took with them into the war, that motivated them as they fought it, that guided them through their dark years of captivity, and that ultimately was the bedrock on which they rebuilt their lives after the war. And that was the philosophy that no one is left behind, and that, in the end, only the commitment to community brings freedom,” said Professor Monteath.

Prime Minister Albanese addressed the 20th anniversary of the Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial in Ballarat on Sunday, saying the stories of former prisoners of war came from a different chapter in the nation’s story.

Read more about the anniversary here.