The so called 'war to end all wars', did nothing of the sort. Countless wars have followed in which countless lives have been lost or destroyed. Among these are the 102,000 Australians who's deaths in battle we remember each year on 11 November.

Of course, 102,000 is no mere statistic. As John Howard reminded us in his 1997 ANZAC address: "Each of the fallen had a family and friends whose lives were enriched by their love and diminished by their loss.

"Each added to the life of a city suburb or country town.

"Each worked before enlistment, as a teacher, a farmer, a labourer, a nurse, a doctor, a clerk, or one of countless other occupations which add to the prosperity and the richness of a nation."

One such man who's story always grabs me is that of Andrew Gillison.

Gillison was a Presbyterian Minister, who, when war was declared in 1914, made the decision to enlist immediately and was appointed Chaplain to the AIF.

He arrived in Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, but as a chaplain was ordered to stay on the ship during the initial fighting. Yet as the casualties grew, and the numbers of dead and injured became too great to bring back to the ships, Gillison managed to talk his way ashore on the morning of April 27.

Gillison spent most of his time helping medics and conducting countless funerals under cover of darkness.

Such was his conduct under danger, that one one soldier wrote in his diary that Gillison was the bravest man he ever knew and that "everyone praised his efforts to cheer the men under hardship and when wounded".

Corporal J. W. Barr wrote of Gillison: "Stained by earth and the blood of fellow men, he was grandly eloquent, his clothes and appearance telling us what he did not."

Others spoke of his "Christian ministration while he supported the weakening frame from which the soul was speeding; a Christ-like devotion to his fellow-men that found him near them in their last moments".

On August 22, 1915, Gillison was preparing to conduct the yet another mass funeral when he heard groaning in the scrub above them on the ridge. Those in attendance crawled up the ridge where they found a wounded soldier, covered in ants.

They crawled out toward the wounded man and started to drag him back over the ridge. Suddenly they were in the sights of a Turkish sniper. Crawling backwards, a bullet hit Gillison in the shoulder and exited through his chest. He died in agony three hours later.

To understand what motivated Gillison, we need look no further than the epitaph on his tombstone:

In remembrance of Rev. Andrew Gillison M.A.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Words straight from the lips of Jesus Christ. Words that anticipate the ultimate sacrifice - when Jesus Christ would go to a Roman cross, bleed and die, so that peace with God might be earned for any who would come under his protection.

It was this experience of Christ's sacrificial love that motivated the sacrificial love shown by Andrew Gillison. It was the example of his master which would lead him to spare nothing in the care of those he was sent to minister to.

On Thursday we remember the sacrifice of those 102,000 Australians who have died in service of our nation. As we remember them, I will take a moment to remember the story of Andrew Gillison and contemplate what motivated him.

And I will ask myself how I might be able to follow his example of Jesus shaped, loving self sacrifice.