The eleventh day of the eleventh month, 2001. The magnificent sandstone GPO clock, towering over Sydney's Martin Place, strikes the eleventh hour. The few hundred people assembled around the cenotaph bow their heads. It is Remembrance Day. A time to pause and reflect on the war to end all wars.

Beyond the ranks of official guests, pedestrians wander past, some pausing momentarily in idle curiosity. Others, ignorant or uncaring of the solemnity of the occasion, scurry along the arched colonnade or push through the edge of the crowd, provoking scowls and murmurs of displeasure. Some, however, take the time to stop and watch as an elderly veteran, red Flanders poppy in his lapel and campaign medals pinned to his chest, places a wreath on the shrine. Later, the Prime Minister, elected to his third term only the previous night, shakes the veteran's hand, declaring him to be 'one of a dying breed'. Yet very few of the onlookers have any idea who the old bloke is.

For anyone outside his immediate circle, Marcel Caux's appearance that Remembrance Day was, like the PM's, quite unexpected. He was one of only four surviving Great War veterans in New South Wales, yet he was also an enigma. Asked by one reporter why he had remained silent about his war service for eighty-four years, he said he did not want to bring back memories of killing other men. 'I was trained to kill ... and I killed. I can never get that out of my mind. It never leaves me.' Another journalist who posed the same question was told, 'Well, no one ever bothered to ask me about it'.

When the questions were finally asked, however, no one could have guessed where the answers would lead ...