ANZAC DAY

[Gary in Aus]

Just arrived home from the farm after having spent a few days in the nations capital.

 

The highlight was attending the Dawn Service at the National War Memorial in Canberra. We arrived at 4:00 AM , wearing nearly every layer of clothing possible as it was a freezing 9 degrees C . We were able to have a front row seat in front of the cenotaph and sat beside a twenty year old couple from Melbourne who had made the trip . It is heartwarming that so many of our younger people are attending memorial services as during the late 80s and early 90s attendance numbers were dropping.

 

There was an estimated crowd of 30,000 which is an increase over last year and according to organisers the numbers have been growing for the past 10 years.

 

My wife and I attended a Dawn Service in Gallipoli in 1996 and there were only about 500 Australians apparently this year there were around 10,000 attending mainly people below 30 years of age.

 

While we waited for the service to begin young recipients of Legacy kept us plied with Anzac bicuits and hot tea and coffee and we were each given a poppy to place in the Unknown warriors tomb.

 

The service is very important to Australians and New Zealanders and is a very emotive and inspirational experience. The National War Memorial is on the rise of a hill and over looks Canberra , it is surrounded by bushland on the sides and the rear . After the lone piper , prayers , the Last Post and at the end of the minutes silence when amazingly 30,000 Australians were actually quiet , this silence was broken by a family of kookaburras calling from the trees.

 

A very Australian moment.

 

The 100 anniversary is on in 2015 and we are already planning to attend in Gallipoli with our families.

 

My wife grandmothers were both war widows from WW2 ,one husband was blown up in a tank in the middle east and the other was a prisoner of war of the japanese in Changi prison , he died from starvation and disease a week after he returned to Australia. My own great grandfather was killed in France in WW1 and most family members have travelled the world to be involved in wars.

 

Every Australian town has a war memorial and where I grew up in rural NSW even a group of two or three houses would have a memorial.

 

Over the past decade there is a trend that our "young people" have become more aware of the plight of our Anzacs and there is a value on what these people gave. It is not in glorifying war or victory scenario but a understanding of what these people did and why they did it .

 

The reading of Attaturks pledge to the mothers of the dead was read by a Legacy youth as was the Poppies in Flanders Fields.

 

We will be back there next year .

[Pilgrim]

Good on the bunch of you, mate. We've bled with each other and that forms a bond that's hard to break, petty disagreements or not.

Pilgrim

[azkaisr]

Very Worthy

 

I may tag along with you in 2015 if possible. That would be a memorial worth seeing in person.

 

Thanks for sharing this.

 

Kaisr

[Les is more]

Thank you, Gary for sharing this very moving memorial with us.

 

I was curious to learn more and came upon this site

 

 

I also looked up the words of Ataturk

 

 

“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives ... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace.

 

“There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours ...

 

“You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace.

 

“After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”

Ataturk, 1934

 

These words attributed to the founder of the Turkish republic and its first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, are inscribed on a memorial at ANZAC Cove.

 

 

 

Also-

 

 

 

In Flanders Fields

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

Canadian Army

 

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

 

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

 

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

[KMG_365]

I've been a fan of Aussie literature and art since reading "The Man From Snowy River" by Banjo Paterson in Jr. High School. I used to have a few Aussie music "albums" given to me by friends (I've since lost them both--one, a well-worn cassette tape stolen with the "boom box"). One was the greatest hits of "The Wild Colonial Boys" which had the song "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda".

 

Here's a tribute to our brothers down under:

 

 

The other was a live album by Redgum which featured "I was only 19/A walk in the light green" about the Vietnam War (the latter being a reference to the topo maps indicating an assignment to an area of only light cover)--both of which struck me deeply.

 

[Gary in Aus]

Sue and I were in Istanbul in 2004 and as we were so close we could not miss another chance to visit Gallipoli.

 

We stopped over night in Cannakalle in the Melbourne Motel and had dinner in the Bondi Cafe. Very Australian.

 

As the battlefields cover an extensive area , this time we went on a guided tour with a driver ,a guide ,2 kiwis, 2 South Africans and we 2 Australians. The trip across in a small launch actually takes you to Anzac Cove to give you an understanding of the hopelessness of the task they faced. You can't land here as the beach is a protected site , so you land about one and a half kilometres east at a small jetty.

 

Our Turkish guide had published a range of journals about the campaign and was passionate about the history from a Turkish and Anzac perspective.

 

Quite a few of the trenches are still in place and maintained , in some spots they were only three metres apart.

 

In the museum there are clumps of bullets that have fused together as they have collided in mid air.

 

The battles at Chunnuk Bar are some of the bravest and saddest in our history. Our soldiers were ordered to mount an attack against the turkish trenches which were only 15 metres away, as the whistle blew the first wave went only to be mown down by machine guns,when they were all dead the next wave lined up and went as well with the same result. Apparently the turkish commander called out for them to stop coming but the next wave lined up and kept going until they were all dead.

 

Then there were no more to send.

 

Over six hundred died in one brief moment in an area the size of a tennis court.

 

We attended the burial service of a Turkish officer and a British officer whose bodies had been uncovered during some roadworks. One had a pistol in his hand and the other a knife and they were locked together in death . It was suggested that as they were fighting a large shell or bomb has exploded killing them both and burying them. Through DNA they were able to identify the British officer and from some form of uniform/ equipment they were able to identify the Turkish officer. The families were there for their reburial , both families had requested that both officers be reburied together ,exactly the way they had been found, locked together and in the same grave.

 

Some of my prized possesions are a rock that I picked up from the beach at Gallipoli , it reminded me of the Rising Sun insignia of our soldiers , I have had this framed.

 

At Lone Pine Cemetery a frond fell from The Pine and I placed this between pages of my guide book and this is now mounted on some maroon cloth and framed .

 

At the Nek ,Attaturk planted an oak in rembrance of the dead and I have two leaves off this tree also mounted and framed.

 

At the Lone Pine cemetary there is a small cairn with the names of Maoris who were killed there and along with the one for our Aborigines.

 

At the end of a wonderful day , exhausted physically and emotionally ,as our minibus made it's way west in to the setting sun, past some of the grave sites our guide read Attaturks pledge to us , we sat in silence as he finished and then he played a recording of Eric Bogle singing "and the band played Waltzing Matilda". This was heart rending.

 

We have also been able to visit Tobruk ,where my wifes grandfather was killed and have been to Changi where her other grandfather was imprisoned.

 

A trip to Villiers -Bretonouve was also completed to lay a wreath at the Australian War Memorial in 2002.

[SANTA]

my respects to All those who participated and their families, it is a shameful loss

 

Our last WWI vet passed away last year. i have made it my goal to attend the 100 anniversary at Vimy Ridge in 2017.

[casticus]

That must have been deeply moving. I am somewhat of an amateur military historian and as you study and learn more you realize how little of the "big picture" is taught.

 

I am currently reading Winston Churchill's book The Hinge of Fate and he includes correspondence between he and Roosevelt, the Australian Prime Minister, and others...

 

There are so many people in the U.S. that don't realize how New Zealand and Australia answered the Commonwealth's call and sent their troops, ships, and planes to the middle east to help defend "The Empire" and then were left virtually naked to the Japanese.

 

From me on behalf of the U.S. I say thank you there have been Aussie troops side by side with the U.S. whenever we have called.

 

May we remember the fallen forever.