2018 marks the centenary year of the end of the "war to end all wars", the brutal and avoidable conflict that claimed more than 20 million lives, toppled three monarchies and brought about the downfall of four empires.

Australia, at the time a nation of just under five million people, was forever changed by the experience. Of the 416,809 men who enlisted 60,000 were killed and another 156,000 were shot, blown up, gassed or taken prisoner.

It is their service, and that of the gallant women who volunteered as nurses to staff many of the field hospitals to which the wounded of all nations were taken, that is remembered today.

Further afield the opening of the $99 million Monash Centre in Villers-Brettoneux, the largest and most expensive museum to be constructed in France in decades, has focused attention on the career of one of the greatest and most controversial Australian military leaders of all time.

Sir John Monash was a complex character who made a notable contribution to the evolution of the tactics that saw the Allies recover from the German spring offensive of 1918 and then go on to break the enemy lines.

This helped to pave the way for the war's successful conclusion, under the leadership of the Supreme Allied Commander, Marshall Ferdinand Foch, on November 11, 1918.

The latest recognition of Monash's remarkable service, which features sterling work by Canberra-based artists, artisans, historians and story tellers, should not draw our attention away from the fact wars are not won by generals alone.

While Foch and Monash were among the many architects of the victory, their efforts would have amounted to nothing without the heroic self-sacrifice of the millions who fought under them.

Australia paid a heavy price for that pyrrhic triumph. We were, in the words of historian Joan Beaumont, left a broken nation.

Our citizen army had been drawn from every city, town, village and farming community across the land. In the aftermath almost every family learnt to live with the pain of grief and sorrow; both for those who never returned and those who came back crippled in body, mind and spirit.

Today is a day when we should remember the parents who lost sons, the wives who lost husbands, the children who lost fathers and the siblings who came of age in shattered families.

It is also a day to reflect on Australians' involvement in a succession of conflicts dating back to the Boer War and even before.

While some of these wars have been the subject of scrutiny and cynicism that does not alter the fact the men and women who served were doing their duty.

The Vietnam experience has taught us we should never again allow our military personnel to be tarred with the same brush as the political leaders who sent them off to fight and die.

To be a soldier sworn to the defence of your country is a noble and, in these troubled times, necessary calling. All too often it demands the highest possible sacrifice.

Lest we forget.