Tim Thomas
Former Australian Special Forces Commando
Gallipoli Medical Research Veteran Ambassador
Founder of Breathwork in Bed

Lest we forget … but what do we remember?

In a world where outrageous headlines give a 24-7 bombardment of our senses … does anything actually stay with us?

We say, ‘Lest we forget’ every year.

We stand still.

We bow our heads.

We say, “We shall remember them …”

But do we really?

Or has our modern world of 2026 trained us to consume so much … so fast … that we can’t slow down long enough to actually feel what those words mean?

Modern Australia was shaped in war. That part isn’t up for debate.

World War I. World War II. Stories of courage, sacrifice, and mateship. A national identity forged under pressure.

But here’s the part that doesn’t get said as often.

Was it worth it?

What did we gain … compared to what we lost? Not in a textbook. Not in a speech. In real terms.

Lives. Sons. Daughters. Futures that never got lived.

Was it courage … or stupidity?

Was it a young Australia trying so hard to prove its worth?

That question sits there. Uncomfortable. Unanswered. And maybe it should.

Because ANZAC Day isn’t just about clean answers. It’s about sitting in something real … long enough to actually feel it.

For me, those questions aren’t theoretical. This isn’t something I read; it’s something lived. I was deployed to Afghanistan in 2009, with the Australian Special Forces, night operations. Mountainous terrain. Brothers lost.

One dark night we received intel of a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) ambush ahead.

No alternate route. We had to go through it.

Standard procedure was to move the heavily armoured vehicles to the rear of the convoy. That’s where the attackers usually target.

Except in the rush … the confusion … we got cut off. We became the rear vehicle in that convoy. No armour. Just a 4WD with the roof cut off … and a few machine guns bolted on.

And in that moment … everyone in that vehicle knew.

This is how it ends.

You notice strange things when you think you’re about to die.

The way your mate’s voice sounds. That familiar Aussie accent … halfway across the world.

The way your hands feel. Heavy. Slow. Like they don’t quite belong to you anymore.

Fear doesn’t feel like panic. It feels like a physical shutdown.

Like your body and mind … start disconnecting.

My vehicle commander said it straight.

“Fellas… if this goes the way I think it will… it’s been a pleasure serving with you.”

No drama. Just truth… with a layer of courage and honour in the face of certain death.

There’s no pause button in moments like that. You can’t just keep scrolling and hope it goes away.

True story—at the time I visualised my own ramp ceremony. Ramp ceremonies are where the flag-covered coffins of the fallen are carried down the ramp of the airplane. The thought then hit me—when our dead bodies get home, they’re going to carry us down the ramp of the airplane—with all this ceremony—all this meaning—just because we got cut off in traffic?

Dark humour is often used in dark situations.

But underneath that, something else was happening.

Fear was doing what it does. Shutting everything down.

And in that moment … I asked myself something: “Do I know anyone who has done this before?”

At first … nothing. No one came to mind. Australia felt a long way away. The night felt darker and somehow lonelier.

Until something shifted.

Not around me … inside me.

I stopped looking outward and something inside me answered.

Tim, you do know some men who on a night as dark as this faced impossible odds—the ANZACs.

Those Aussie blokes who ran up a beach into gunfire. Outnumbered. Outgunned. No advantage. No guarantee.

What did they do? They kept moving forward.

Nothing outside them was strong enough to override what was inside them.

For me at that moment … they weren’t history. They were right there with me. Poking me in the chest … saying “Lest YOU forget. Lest you forget what’s inside you. Lest you forget the power of looking after your mates.”

It was like the sun coming up at midnight. My whole body felt illuminated.

I realised something important. Those men were just men. They were ordinary people, but they were so deeply connected.

Connected to each other.

Connected to something bigger.

Connected to something inside themselves that no amount of chaos could take away.

Do you think a news headline would have stopped an ANZAC going up that beach?

Really think about that.

Would a shocking story … a higher fuel price … a wave of public opinion … have changed their decision at that moment?

Or was what they were connected to, stronger than anything outside them?

A hundred years later …

We’ve never had more information. More updates.

More access to everything happening in the world.

And yet …We’ve never felt more disconnected.

We carry the world in our pockets and with that, all the wars, politics, crisis and division.

Constantly.

I do believe that does something to us. It keeps us in a low-level state of threat. Always reacting. Always bracing. Always tired. Paralysed. Polarised.

It’s like we’ve become a world standing around a table, staring at one cake. Stressing over who gets the biggest slice, forgetting we can make our own.

However, when we are connected, something changes.

We don’t just react. We create. We expand. We build. We give, generously.

That’s what the ANZACs had, that’s what the ANZACs gave. They didn’t have comfort. They didn’t have certainty. They had connection. From that, came those powerful actions history remembers.

That’s why ANZAC Day matters.

Not just because of what happened. But because of what it shows us.

One morning a year … everything slows down. We stand there in the dark. Cold air. Quiet. Usually raining.

However, there are no notifications. No noise. No doom scrolling.

And for a moment … We are not OUT there. We are IN here.

And maybe that’s the point.

Maybe ANZAC Day isn’t just about remembering the ANZACs and those fallen. Maybe it’s about us also, remembering who we really are.

I do feel confident that those fallen would want us to remember who we are as a nation, and also who we are as humans.

Because the ANZACs, right or wrong, weren’t waiting for the world to calm down. They didn’t need perfect conditions. They didn’t need certainty. They had something stronger.

Connection.

And maybe the real question is this:

In 2026, do we still have that?

Lest we forget …not just them, but ourselves.