There’s a difference between dying for your country and being sacrificed for corporate greed.

When men stand shoulder to shoulder in defense of their homeland, they fight not just for flags or borders. They fight for each other. That’s the kind of war where brothers become legends.

And no story captures that better than what happened in a muddy Belgian field almost a century ago.

In 2006, during routine roadworks near Polygon Wood, Belgium, a place that once roared with the thunder of the Great War, workers unearthed a haunting discovery: the remains of five WWI soldiers.

BROTHERS IN ARMS

Among them was one body wrapped tenderly in a groundsheet, arms crossed over the chest, not left to rot by time, but laid to rest with love.

Battlefield archaeologist Johan Vanderwalle was called to investigate. DNA testing revealed the soldier was Private Jack Hunter, an Australian teenage soldier from New South Wales. What came next was even more extraordinary.

Jack’s younger brother, Jim, had fought beside him on those same blood-soaked fields. When Jack fell, Jim refused to abandon him. He buried his brother by hand, amid gunfire and chaos. A final act of devotion in the middle of hell.

After the war, Jim returned in 1919 to find the grave and give Jack a proper burial. But the land had shifted, churned and broken. The grave was lost until 2006.

Johan, deeply moved by the brothers’ bond, launched the Brothers-in-Arms Memorial Project, raising €160,000 to commission a powerful sculpture:

Jim cradled Jack in his arms, just as he had done in the final moments of his life. Crafted from family photos by an Australian artist, the 800kg bronze statue now stands near Johan’s café, Taverne de Dreve, in Zonnebeke.

Inside, his museum is filled with relics of war, helmets, bullets, shattered dreams and now, two brass rings forged from battlefield casings: a symbol of two brothers eternally joined.

The sculpture was unveiled on 25 September 2022, exactly 105 years after the Battle of Polygon Wood, a tribute not just to ANZAC courage, but to something greater: loyalty, sacrifice, love.

In an age when war is too often waged for profit, let this remind us what real honor looks like.

They didn’t fight for oil. They didn’t fight for rare earth minerals. They didn’t fight for corporations and the enrichment of a few. They didn’t fight for empire. They fought for each other.

‘War is when people shoot each other, who don’t even know each other, on behalf of people who know each other, but don’t shoot each other.’  

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WITNESS TO HISTORY Mike Walsh FORBIDDEN HISTORY: The bestselling epic of the Third Reich 1918-1959. ‘Of all the innumerable written source materials I have read during the last 70 years concerning Adolf Hitler, Witness to History is the most compelling, realistic overview of the Third Reich in print because its events are told by those who made them.’ ~ Marc Roland. https://barnesreview.org/product/witness-to-history-the-reich-legend-uncensored/