REMEMBRANCE DAY services across the region have brought military personnel, veterans, war widows, sub-branch members, and community members together to pay their respects and remember those who lost their life in conflict.

The Cooma ceremony conducted by the Cooma Monaro RSL Sub-branch, featured a commemorative address by Paul McGufficke who at the conclusion of the service laid ornaments and pieces of war memorabilia alongside the wreaths against the cenotaph.

The ornaments represented Mr McGufficke’s pilgrimage to the Western Front.

A passionate military historian, Mr McGufficke was inspired to do the Western Front trip after attending the Bungarby cenotaph and reading the epitaph of William James Kelly from Bungarby.

After nearly 12 months of research he found 220 Monaro locals, from Delegate to Michelago, and 171 were buried or commemorated on the Western Front.

He covered more than 60 cemeteries over six days on the Western Front plus a week through Paris and Normandy, including the Menin Gate Memorial located at the eastern exit of the town of Ieper in Flanders, Belgium, and Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery where there is a Australian national memorial to Australian military personnel killed on the Western Front during World War I.

“It was a magnificent trip, and these are all the things I took with me overseas – 1914-1918 pennies, the centenary coins from 2014 to 2016, shrapnel and some wire from Gallipoli, the three medals all the returned soldiers received, a wreath from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, a small wreath Cooma North Public School students made up and the Centenary Legacy Bear.

These went everywhere with me. Also, sheep manure, gum leaves and gum nuts – I surprisingly got through Customs.

“I started the journey at 3am on September 14, so I think it’s appropriate that I finish it here.

“I am going back in 2026 as I was only able to do 146 of 171 servicemen, so it’s a good excuse to go back.”

Mr McGufficke has documented the information he discovered about the local servicemen - where they are buried and in what cemetery and has taken photographs of the burial sites.

“There’s five or six of these men buried in Australia, but most of them are buried on the Western Front, with some in Gallipoli.

“Over the next six months or so I will collate all the details and put it into a book.”

The commemoration service included the reciting of the ode by president of Cooma-Monaro RSL Sub-branch, Ray Peters-Smith, wreath laying, hymns, the reading of the Lord's Prayer by Aux Lt Bryan Bartlett from the Salvation Army Cooma, and reading by sub-branch member, Dennis Feaver, of the war poem “In Flanders Fields”.

Mr McGufficke also spoke at the well-attended Bungarby service on Sunday.