The Tomb of Lt. John Learmonth, AIF is a poem by Australian poet J. S. Manifold.
[1] The poem has subsequently been published numerous times in various Australian poetry anthologies.
The poem was written in memory of a school friend of the poet's who had been captured by the Germans in Crete in the Second World War, and who later died in the prison camp.
[citation needed] The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature noted: "...the poem is both a tribute to the unpretentious quality of common human heroism as exemplified in John Learmonth's hopeless stand against the Germans in Crete and a linking of that courage to 'the old heroic virtues' that are part of Australia's past.
"[2] In a review of the poet's collection On My Selection, Susan McKernan in The Canberra Times noted: "'John Learmonth' is a wonderful poem which manages the difficult task of being patriotic without being chauvinistic, of praising courage in war without praising war.