This war memorial was commissioned by the Old Geelong Grammarians Association on 9 June 1923, to commemorate the eighty-eight old boys of the school who were killed during the First World War (ML MSS 97/7, items 22 and 23).

This bronze group is symbolic of the triumph of youthful heroism over evil. Two war-weary Australian soldiers, one in the full fighting equipment of the French trenches, the other representative of the Light Horse of Palestine, are placed at the base of the sculpture. Bowed down with fatigue, they support on their shoulders the weight of an immense bird, which has the attributes of an eagle combined with those of a vulture, symbolic of the Spirit of War. The bird struggles to avert the deadly thrust of the long, two-handed sword held by the youth. This central figure is portrayed naked (except for a close-fitting headpiece and armour about his loins) to suggest the spirit of youthful heroism. In showing his hero near-naked, Lambert transformed the orthodox images of the slayer, such as those  of Saint George, to create a work about the Allied victory over the Germans on one level and the human conquest over the warlike spirit on another.

The sculpture was devised to be viewed in the round: the eagle’s wings and the soldiers’ bodies provide an energetic, diagonal outward force, which acts as a counterpoint to the downward pressure of the vertical figure; and this dialectic between movement and inertia gives the group a dramatic tension.

Lambert started to think about the sculpture in 1922 (ML MSS 29/5), and made over forty pencil studies for this group. He did not begin work on the full-scale sculpture until he had moved to his Randwick studio in October 1923, where he was able to set up a large armature for the sculpture and model the work. About this time he said ‘I know for myself that which is easy is not worth doing, and that nothing matters to an artist but the fulfilment of his gift’ (Lambert 1938, p.156). The final work was unveiled at Geelong Grammar School by the Governor-General, Lord Stonehaven, on 24 June 1927.