Before dawn broke, Davey was hit by a German bomb, becoming one of the last three Australians to die on a First World War battlefield along with fellow sappers Arthur Johnson and Charles Barrett, from WA.

On the same day, two Australian Flying Corps aces were shot down by German aircraft while escorting British bombers over Belgium.

Adelaide-born Captain Thomas Rich Baker, credited with 12 combat victories, was killed along with Lieutenant Jack Palliser, of Ulverstone (Tas), who brought down five German aircraft in the previous week.

When the guns fell silent at 11am on November 11, 1918, Australia had been at war four years and three months.

A generation of young men was shattered and few Australian families were untouched by war.

From a population of fewer than five million, 416,809 Australians enlisted and 330,000 served overseas. The cost of victory included more than 60,000 dead, 152,000 wounded or gassed and 4000 taken prisoner.

Another 60,000 soldiers died of war-related causes in the decade to follow.

Euphoric scenes in Australia celebrated the Armistice, but for Tenterfields Captain Woodward, November 11 was more sobering.

He wrote: The outward manifestation of joy which could be expected ... was absent.

We were as men who had completed a task which was abhorrent to us. The occasion called for thanksgiving. It was too great for words.

For Geelong-born nurse Elsie Tranter, November 11 was another heartbreaking day caring for soldiers.

She wrote: France went almost mad with joy ...

But inside the hospital, a fair-haired soldier nicknamed Sunny Jim was dying. This poor little lad finished his battle towards evening. He was barely 18 years old and we were all so fond of him.

For soldiers such as Bendigos Lieutenant George Ingram, the end of hostilities must have been bittersweet.

Ingram was the last of 64 Australians awarded the Victoria Cross in France, for leading attacks at Montbrehain on October 5, 1918. But both his brothers died on the Western Front in 1917.

Australian troops advanced almost 60kms, liberated 116 towns and villages and suffered 35,000 casualties in the wars final months. They had faced the power of modern artillery, tasted the horrors of poison gas and endured German prison camps.

War correspondent Charles Bean drove to Fromelles on Armistice Day and found the battlefield simply full of our dead skulls and bones and torn uniforms were lying about everywhere.

The remains of an Unknown Soldier who died on the Western Front are interred in the Australian War Memorial. His tomb carries the words 'He is all of them and he is one of us.'