Thirty-three bodies returned to Australia last Thursday in the country's largest repatriation of dead servicemen and their dependents, including six children.
They were greeted by a guard of honour as the coffins were led to the hangar.
All of the dead were connected with Australia's involvement in overseas conflicts which have been archived and, in some cases, forgotten altogether.
In the politics of Australia's short historical memory, a few wars stand out: the baptismal conflict of the First World War with its bloody symbolism, and the exterminating rages of the Second World War which saw a foreign power reach, though not occupy, Australian shores.
Few Australians (and this says as much about school curricula as it does about general discussion on the subject) would know about the at times covert role played by Australian servicemen in the Malaysian-Indonesian conflict between 1962 and 1966; or the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960).
Most focus on the stained, estranging Vietnam conflict, one deemed ignoble by even some family members of the fallen personnel.
Returning the fallen has been a contentious matter. Only in 1966 was a policy introduced that formally asserted that servicemen killed in foreign theatres (in that case, Vietnam) would be brought back to Australia for burial. Those who perished prior to that date, such as Warrant Officer Kevin Conway, Australia's first combat casualty in Vietnam, were left.
The choice left for families was grim: cough up 500 pounds to have the remains transported back to Australia, the equivalent of half-a-year's salary, or see the bodies buried in the Terendak Military Cemetery in Malaysia. (Singapore's Kranji Cemetery also supplied a resting place.)
"The repatriation offers a chance to reconsider Australia's varied role in foreign conflicts. These have not all been undertaken in the spirit of cold, logical sobriety."
In some cases, the issue has been politicised, with dead soldiers discarded for being the immoral instruments of disputed foreign policy. This is particularly the case in Vietnam.
The return of these servicemen and dependents should constitute far more than a battle over remains. The press have tended to see it in such procedural terms, a dispute over flawed paperwork, bureaucracy and battling the establishment. The Daily Telegraph focused specifically on Vietnam with the headline 'Australian Vietnam War dead finally return home'.
Veterans Affairs Minister Dan Tehan similarly focused on the sore of Vietnam, with the repatriation giving Australians 'a chance as a nation to stop, pause and reflect on the service and sacrifice that our