Anzac Day observed across Australia
COUNTRY REMEMBERS THE MORE THAN 44,000 ALLIED SOLDIERS KILLED AT GALLIPOLI IN FIRST WORLD WAR BATTLE
Australians gathered with descendants of former allies and enemies around the country, on a Turkish coast and in a French town yesterday in dawn services to commemorate the moment when Australian and New Zealand Army Corps troops waded ashore at the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey 103 years ago in their first major battle of the First World War.
Thousands of Australians gathered in the pre-dawn chill on the Somme in northern France yesterday for a poignant ceremony in memory of the soldiers who fought and died on the Western Front, a century on from the end of the First World War.
Some 8,000 Australians made the round-the-world trip to mark a special centenary Anzac Day, Australia’s national day of remembrance on the Somme, scene of some of the most brutal battles of the 1914-18 conflict.
Tony McNiff said it was “spine tingling and extremely emotional” to have made it to the Australian National Memorial, just outside the town of Villers-Bretonneux, the site of a major victory for Australian troops in 1918.
“We’re really among the privileged few to be among the 8,000 here,” McNiff, who served 35 years in the Australian air force, told AFP.
Safety precautions
Because extremists have targeted annual Anzac Day ceremonies in the past, concrete barriers were placed around the service in downtown Sydney to protect those who gathered at Martin Place.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, his French counterpart, Edouard Philippe, and the heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, marked Anzac Day in France with a service that also commemorates the 100th anniversary of Australian troops taking the town of Villers-Bretonneux from the Germans in a daring counterattack in the early hours of the third Anzac Day.
Villers-Bretonneux is now home to the main Australian Memorial of the Western Front.
Phillipe said half the 313,000 Australians who fought in France and Belgium were wounded or died, forging “a brotherhood of spilt blood” with Australia’s allies.
Like Turnbull, he paid tribute to his country’s forces serving around the world in current conflicts, from Syria to antiextremist troops in west Africa.
Turnbull said: “The Australians had come from the other side of the world to defend the freedom of France. We meet here 100 years later on land long healed to remember them.”
Prince Charles said the spirit of Australians killed in Gallipoli and the Western Front “will forever be part of the Australian identity.”