Private Ted Ryan stands as a talisman for today’s personnel, whose masters have deployed and redeployed them, to their enduring detriment

• Crowds return for Anzac Day services across most of Australia

This Anzac Day our politicians will again be front and centre of commemorations for Australia’s 62,000-plus first world war dead and those who died in all this country’s other conflicts.

That’s the thing about wars. Young (mostly) men get to die in them or endure the physical and mental scars while the (mostly) older men who send them get to commemorate while making old bones.

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