Australia celebrates and remembers on Anzac Day 2013

Tens of thousands of people stood motionless in the darkness to remember their fallen countrymen and women as they marked the anniversary of the landing on Gallipoli in 1915.

In Gallipoli, the dawn service at Anzac Cove was disrupted by a protester.

A middle-aged man started yelling in Turkish just after Australian Veterans Affairs Minister Warren Snowden had finished his address.

The man has now been taken away by Turkish police and escorted out of the site.

Numbers of those attending the dawn service were down on previous years with about 5200 making the trek – about a thousand less people than last year and just on half as few from the high in 2005.

But the service’s director Tim Evans said interest was fairly static and was likely to increase next year in the final dry run before the balloted 2015 centenary commemorations where the capacity of 10,500 will attend.

In Townsville north of Queensland, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Australian children will be the driving force behind Anzac day for ”all of time”.

The PM said she is encouraged by the the number of young people attending Anzac day services around the country.

”The thing I always look for is the number of children and there are just more and more and more,” she told ABC TV.

Parents often freely admitted to her that it was their children who ”dragged” them to services.

”It’s actually the children who are driving the next level of engagement.

Old Diggers shine on new-look Anzac Day

”I think that means that for all of time we will commemorate Anzac day and think about who we are as Australians on that day.”

Ms Gillard said for her personally the day was about the ”spirit of being Australian, and our history and what’s forged us and shaped us”.

One thing the Prime Minister won’t be doing today is enjoying a rum and milk at the local RSL.

”I’ll have to rule that out,” Ms Gillard said.

After the service, the PM said it will take some years to assess the full extent of services needed to support veterans of Afghanistan and other recent conflicts.

Ms Gillard was responding to the concerns of Victoria Cross recipient Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith who worries wounded diggers could be forgotten as the Afghanistan conflict fell off the radar.

In Papua New Guinea, Governor-General Quentin Bryce has paid her respects to current and former Australian soldiers at an Anzac Day service at the Bomana war cemetery.

At this morning’s ceremony, Ms Bryce was joined by PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill and Australian High Commissioner to PNG Deborah Stokes, as well as her PNG counterpart Sir Michael Ogio.

More than 2000 people armed with glow sticks crowded into Bomana, located about 19km outside of Port Moresby.

”Wherever we come from and wherever we go, this is a day that gives pause and silence to our journey,” Ms Bryce said in a short speech.

”A moment to remember the Australian soldiers, merchant navy men and airmen – and members of the Papua New Guinea local forces – who died defending this territory and ours.

”The tranquility of this clearing belies the desperate, bloody confrontations of the Kokoda campaign that took place beyond.”

Silence for the fallen, letters from the brave

Bomana is final testing place to more than 3000 soldiers killed serving in Papua New Guinea.

Australia and PNG formed close ties during World War II, with Australian soldiers being aided by locals known as Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels.

Ms Bryce will later fly to Isurava and Kokoda to pay her respects at memorials in both locations.

Anzac Day will mark the fourth day of Ms Bryce’s five-day state visit to PNG.

Delivering the Anzac Day address at Hellfire Pass in Thailand, Defence Minister Stephen Smith paid tribute to former Australian and New Zealand prisoners of war, saying the way they looked out for each still rightly inspired the two nations.

Mr Smith said one in five prisoners, including 2800 Australians who never came home, perished as they worked on the infamous Thai-Burma Railway during World War II.

Mr Smith said the most notorious stretch of the railway claimed the lives of 700 POWs in just four months in 1943.

”Those POWs who did survive suffered crippling damage to their health,” Mr Smith said.

Many died after the war at a significantly higher rate than other veterans.

”The endurance of the Australian and New Zealand POWs and the way they looked out for each other still rightly inspires our two nations.”

Four former Australian POWs have returned to Thailand on a pilgrimage to the place where they worked as prisoners of the Japanese 70 years ago.

Mr Smith said he was honoured by their presence.

Thousands gather for Sydney dawn service

”Being in this place will be a deeply poignant reminder for them of their own endurance, of fallen mates, of their bond with those who suffered alongside them, of those who helped them survive,” he said.

In Canberra, Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith has marched with the children of his fallen comrades in Canberra to mark ANZAC Day.

Keegan Locke, 17, the son of Sergeant Matthew Locke and the children of Sergeant Blaine Diddams – Elle-Lou, 16, and Henry, 14 – took part in the National Ceremony at the Australian War Memorial today.

Corporal Roberts-Smith spoke with the kids and comforted them before the walk.

Corporal Roberts-Smith made a moving tribute to Sgt Locke during the dawn service in Canberra, reciting the words of the son of Matthew Locke, killed in action in Afghanistan’s Chora Valley in 2007.

”Whenever something challenges me and I think of giving up I can feel dad looking down on me cheering me on. His death left a hole in my heart but his spirit has given me the motivation to push myself further than ever before,” wrote Keegan Locke.

Corporal Roberts-Smith paused and looked emotional as he read the words.

“I truly believe he has given me the gift of the Anzac spirit,” he said.

Corporal Roberts-Smith spoke of a young soldier whose wife gave birth while he was in Afghanistan.

The soldier’s wife cried as she told her husband what the baby boy looked like.

“Just like you she says, but with red hair,” Corporal Roberts-Smith read.

Another soldier recalled killing on the battlefield.

Solemn Anzac dawn service in Melbourne

“I felt so guilty and I still do.”

More than 30,000 attended the service at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, a large increase on previous years.

Corporal Roberts-Smith is the most public face of a call for younger veterans not only to attend dawn services but to march in parades.

Speaking after the service Corporal Roberts-Smith said he hoped the service today, and particularly the readings, helped give Australians an insight into what serving personnel went through.

”Particularly in Afghanistan – I don’t think a lot of information comes out about what we do there,” he said.

”It’s still a real war and there are a lot of people going through it.”

Corporal Roberts-Smith said he had to rehearse his readings ”a couple of times” because of the emotion behind them.

”The writings are from the guys hearts and to me, I know what they’ve done and what they’ve been through and yeah it is emotional.” he said.

”The idea today was not to talk about the guts and blood it was to talk about the emotion and what people go through and what it means for them to serve. That’s what’s important and that’s why we do it.”

The Anzac Day dawn service at the Australian War Memorial has featured some innovations, among them readings of accounts of Afghanistan by Australian servicemen and their families.

From midnight images of Australian servicemen and women, accompanied by the names of iconic battlefields from over a century of conflicts, were projected onto the Memorial building.

Excerpts from letters and diaries of Australians who experienced firsthand war were also read out from 4.30am.

Families suffer from loss in war

War Memorial director and former defence minister Brendan Nelson said today’s service was ”extraordinary”.

”From my perspective here today I think the dawn service has been an extraordinary event and I am very proud of all our staff and volunteers who made it happen,” Dr Nelson said.

”Everyone we have spoken to has said we have more people here today than last year. It looks in excess of 30,000.”

A national ceremony will be held in Canberra from 10.15am, attended by Tony Abbott.

Mr Abbott said Anzac Day is the most sacred day in our national life.

”Today, we honour all who have served our country in war and in peace,” Mr Abbott said in a statement.

”Australia is a better place because of their service and the world is a safer place because of their sacrifice.”

Corporal Roberts-Smith will be accompanied by the children of Sergeant Locke and Sergeant Blaine Diddams, both killed in Afghanistan in the march at the war memorial later on this morning.

As well as the readings from Afghanistan, the memorial displayed the names of iconic Australian battles which were have flashed onto the side of the memorial building – Lone Pine, Long Tan, Gallipoli and many more – as thousands in Canberra gathered for the Anzac Day dawn service.

And with them have appeared the images of Australian men and women taken in more than a century of conflict.

The dawn service outside the memorial has attracted ever increasing crowds – an estimated 25,000 last year -with the expectation of a record much crowd as the centenary of World War I and the Gallipoli landing approaches.

The dawn service will be followed by the Anzac Day indigenous commemoration at the memorial behind the war memorial complex.

Australia plans to have the majority of troops out of Afghanistan by December.

Currently around 1600 Australian servicemen and women are in the war-torn nation.

In Sydney, a parade of 20,000 serving and former defence force personnel is setting off in Sydney, 98 years to the day since the landings at Gallipoli.

Marchers and bands gathered around Martin Place for the 9am (AEST) start of the Anzac day Parade, which will pass the Cenotaph before heading up George Street and on to Hyde Park.

With no surviving World War I diggers to take part this year, those who served will be represented by a memorial horse and the flags of units that fought in that conflict.

NSW Governor Marie Bashir will lead the parade that features more than 45 military, cadet, college and school bands.

Former Defence Force chief General Peter Cosgrove, chair of the NSW Centenary Committee, will march with the 9th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment.

”I’ll get in the ranks with the boys and we sort of shuffle around . . . I’m always more focussed on the bloke in front because you’ve got to stay in step, that’s sometimes a challenge,” he told the Seven Network.

During the parade there will be flyovers of RAAF Hawk fighter trainer and aircraft from the Historical Aircraft Society.

Earlier, thousands filled Sydney’s Martin Place for a dawn service and heard the Anzac spirit continues to inspire Australian servicemen and women in current conflicts across the world.

Tim Barrett, Commander Australian Fleet, gave the Anzac Day address to a sombre crowd at Martin Place.

”It was on this day that Australia’s national identity was forged in the courage and determination of our young men,” he said.

”Their fighting prowess, irrepressible humour and sense of mateship would come to symbolise the triumph and the spirit over adversity and defeat.

”It is this Anzac spirit that shows us not who we are intrinsically as Australians but who we want to be as a nation.

”It has inspired Australian servicemen and women for almost a century and it continues to inspire those who are right now deployed to conflicts across the world serving our nation.

”It is a time to think of the 3000 or so men and women of the Australian Defence Force who are currently serving with great distinction overseas from South Sudan, Egypt to the Middle East, Afghanistan, in the Southeast Asian region and the South Pacific.”

Among those in the crowd was Blue Mountains resident Michael Adams, who was draped in military medals.

”My father was in World War II in New Guinea and my great grandfather was killed over in France in 1917 so I come here every year to honour them, as well remember those who have been left behind,” Mr Adams said.

Vietnam veteran Col Kelson has attended the dawn service in Sydney for 28 years.

”Why wouldn’t you come,” the 64-year-old said.

”Let’s face it, there’s lots of blokes that aren’t; never had the opportunity to be here today.

”It’s all about them.”

Wreaths were laid at the Martin Place cenotaph by Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell, state Opposition Leader John Robertson and federal MP Tanya Plibersek.

Special guests NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell and retired Australian Army general Peter Cosgrove were due to attend the service too.

Parts of George, Pitt, Castlereagh and King streets have closed for the Anzac Day parade.

In Brisbane, more than 20,000 people cheered on veterans of wars past and present as the Anzac day march wound through the city centre.
Super Hornets shot through Brisbane’s clear blue skies to kick start the march at 10am (AEST).

Jeeps and buggies carried some of the World War II veterans, including one of a few surviving World War II Rats of Tobruk, Captain Neil Russell.

Parade organisers say WWII veterans’ numbers are dropping with just 17 at today’s parade.

Three former RAAF pilots, who served in the Vietnam War, Ron Mitchell, 65, Lachie Milne, 62, and John Thynne, 62, told AAP they are pleased to see the number of well-wishers grow every year.

All three had mates who died in the war and had fathers and grand fathers who fought in World War I and II.

”I spend a lot of the earlier part of the day thinking about my dad and my granddad. I get teary just thinking of it,” Mr Mitchell told AAP.

”I’m proud of them and everyone else for what they did.”

He says they always look forward to having a drink with mates after the march and sharing war stories.

Up to 18,000 people filled ANZAC Square in Brisbane’s inner city for a dawn service.

All but about 100 ignored the invitation to beat the crowd and watch the event live on screens in King George Square.

There were old diggers glistening with medals and young diggers standing in suits.

Some people dressed up, others came in warmer tracksuits and groups of school children stood in uniform.

As the Reveille drifted over those remembering, some broke into a sob, but others stood tall.

Tony Smith, a Vietnam veteran who organised the dawn service, says it’s fantastic so many showed up.

”For me it’s great, my grandfather fought on the Western Front and my dad was in Tobruk,” he told AAP.

”And I remember my own mates in Malaya and Vietnam.

”Everyone here has someone or something to meditate on today, even if it’s just an idea.”

In her address, the Governor of Queensland Penelope Wensley reminded the crowd that Anzac Day was, in the midst of sorrow, to “celebrate the Anzac spirit” 98 years after the legend was born on the shores of Gallipoli.

Ninety-five-year-old Neil Russell, a veteran of the Middle East and the Pacific, will be just one of many living stories in the Queensland capital’s march.

As a 25-year-old first lieutenant, he helped stop the Japanese from taking Port Moresby in the 1942 Battle of Milne Bay.

He says when the order came to fix bayonets and charge, his company “stormed the enemy stronghold”.

“And the Japs shot off like a Bondi tram,” he said.

In Melbourne, thousands of Victorians are lining St Kilda Road for the annual Anzac Day march, after near-record crowds attended the dawn service.

Crowds have gathered from Flinders St to the Shrine of Remembrance in an emotional salute to our Diggers.

About 45,000 people assembled in the dark for the dawn service and stood in silence as the Last Post rang out across the Shrine.

Commemorations started at 5.45am and will be followed by a wreath laying service and march.

Shrine of Remembrance CEO Denis Baguley says it will be a very traditional service, reflecting the commemoration of Australian service men and women.

”It is a simple service, but one that is very poignant,” he said.

He said everyone from young children to veterans would be attending the service.

AFL teams Essendon and Collingwood will clash at the MCG in the afternoon in their traditional Anzac Day clash, then the Melbourne Storm play the New Zealand Warriors in the NRL at nearby AAMI Park in the evening.

Meanwhile, former premier Ted Baillieu will head a committee to organise Victorian celebrations for the 100th anniversary of Anzac day.

Premier Denis Napthine said the state government was also making significant improvements to Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance, including a $45 million development of the undercroft to enhance its commemorative and educational capabilities.

In Adelaide, thousands of people have gathered along the route for the annual Anzac day.

Led off by representatives of the New Zealand forces, the march looks set to be blessed by cool and dry conditions.

It will take those marching from the war memorial on North Terrace to the Cross of Sacrifice where the final Anzac day services will be conducted.

Veterans’ Affairs Minister Jack Snelling said he was impressed by the respect shown by South Australians to those who served.

”I am heartened by the way South Australians show their appreciation to those who have served in every conflict in which Australia has been involved, from the Boer War to the current conflict in Afghanistan,” Mr Snelling said.

The dawn service attracted a crowd of more than 5000 in keeping with a recent increase in numbers.

A video featuring Australian diggers fighting at the Somme in France during World War I was played in Adelaide, marking a departure from the traditional service that has been attended by growing crowds in recent years.

The video will form part of a film to mark the Anzac centenary in 2015.

The dawn service heard the families of soldiers killed in war inherit a legacy of mourning and unimaginable emotional pain.

Veterans SA director Bill Denny said 300,000 Australians had died in 51 conflicts from 1863 to the present day.

But he said that national loss ignored the enormous peripheral casualties of war – the millions of men, women and children who mourned or continue to mourn.

”Nowhere is that pain felt more keenly than among the families of someone killed at war,” he said.

”Many times families had little involvement in the decision of their loved one to enlist.

”Occasionally they were vehemently against it, but could do nothing.

”In every case however they inherit a legacy of mourning and unimaginable emotional pain lasting their lifetime.”

Wreaths were also laid at the memorial with SA Governor Kevin Scarce, acting premier John Rau and Opposition Leader Steven Marshall among those to take part.

Also in South Australia, news research will try to determine what was so special about the Australian diggers who fought in World War I.

University of Adelaide PhD student Lachlan Coleman is comparing the resources available to Australian soldiers to those provided to their British comrades during the Hundred Days Campaign in northern France which paved the way for victory against the Germans.

War historian Robin Prior said little work had been done to understand why the Australian soldiers were so successful.

In Tasmania, the Anzac spirit has been credited for helping Tasmania through its worst bushfires in 50 years.

Tasmania Fire Service representatives are for the first time among those preparing for Hobart’s Anzac day march.

The TFS has been invited to join the procession through the capital in the wake of January’s devastating bushfires.

The parade will make its way to the Hobart Cenotaph in the city’s Queen’s Domain, where Tasmanian Governor Peter Underwood will deliver his annual Anzac day address.

A colourful crowd of several hundred has begun lining major thoroughfare Macquarie Street, in cool and blustery conditions, many in uniform or wearing medals.

Afternoon showers and a top temperature of 19C are forecast for Hobart.

Earlier, more than 5000 attended the city’s dawn service at the Hobart Cenotaph above the River Derwent.

In temperatures of around 6C, a crowd that spanned the generations heard Anglican Reverend Cyril Dann conduct the service.

The dawn service heard the lessons of sacrifice and mateship taught by Australia’s World War One servicemen are still on display when times get tough.

Year nine student Hamish Pickford has recounted the story of an anonymous man who donated the generator from the back of his ute to a queue of people heading back to fire-ravaged Dunalley during January’s crisis.

”He left without leaving a name or an address so it could be returned to him,” Hamish said.

”He just gave it to them, a total stranger to the people of that town to this very day and he gave them hope.”

Ceremonies were taking place in around 50 towns around Tasmania, including a dawn service for the first time at Dunalley in the state’s south.

Jodi Willcox brought her two daughters, aged seven and five, to remember their great-great grandfather who fought at Gallipoli.

”I think it’s important for the children to understand the sacrifices that they made and that that’s why we have all the things that we have today and can live the life we live,” Ms Willcox told AAP.

Vietnam veteran Jim Lockhart’s grandfather fought in the Boer War and his father in World War II.

Mr Lockhart will catch up with his three Tasmanian room-mates from recruitment training at Puckapunyal, having moved back home after 40 years in Queensland.

”It’s a wonderful day and people should know what it’s all about,” he said.a large Anzac Day crowd has been greeted by a cold morning at the Hobart Cenotaph above the River Derwent.

Ceremonies will take place in around 50 towns around Tasmania, including a dawn service for the first time at bushfire-hit town Dunalley in the state’s south.

A peacekeepers’ service at Anglesea Barracks was attended by Australian Greens leader Christine Milne.

In Perth, record crowds are expected to line the march under cloudy skies, after an estimated 50,000 attended Perth’s dawn service at King’s Park.

Modern day veteran Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Willis, whose grandfather Robert Lowson was one of the original Anzacs who landed at Gallipoli in 1915, will lead Western Australia’s main Anzac Day march on a new route and with a new focus.

Vietnam veteran, former state and federal politician and now Return Services league WA president Graham Edwards said a break with tradition would see 47-year-old Lt Col Willis – a veteran of service in Cambodia, Bosnia, East Timor, the Solomon Islands, Iraq and Afghanistan – head the march.

”As we look forward to the centenary of Anzac I’m calling on veterans from my era in Vietnam and those much younger, who’ve served so proudly in more recent times, to join forces with the RSL,”’ Mr Edwards said.

”We need them to come forward to carry on the traditions and responsibilities of Anzac day. The challenge for us is to remain relevant to all generations.”

Lt Col Willis said his pride at being able to lead the march was tempered with a realisation the Anzac tradition needed work to survive.

”The world and Australia have changed,” Lt Col Willis said.

”But I’m sure those challenges can be met and the RSL can deliver like it did for my grandfather’s generation.”

A sword belonging to one of Australia’s most inspiring battlefield commanders will be the centrepiece of the Anzac Day march.

Brigadier Arnold Potts, who commanded the brigade that held back the Japanese advance during bitter fighting on the Kokoda Trail in World War II, wore the sword when he received a Military Cross decoration from King George V at Buckingham Palace in 1916 for serving on the Western Front.

The sword will be held by his successor Lieutenant Colonel Rhogan Aitken, commanding officer of the Royal Western Australia Regiment’s 16th Battalion, as he leads his troops through the city’s streets.

An estimated crowd of more than 35,000 people filled Kings Park for the dawn service at the State War Memorial including young families and war veterans proudly wearing their medallions.

The WA government, meanwhile, says work to prepare the historic West Australian coastal city of Albany for next year’s Anzac commemorations will be completed on time.

The site where thousands of Australian and New Zealand troops departed for Egypt and then Gallipoli in Turkey in 1914 needs to be finished by November 1 next year, when there will be a re-enactment of the departure of ships from King George Sound.

In Darwin, Australians and American marines, who are stationed in Darwin for training during the dry season, also took part in the parade.

A riderless horse signifying unknown soldiers who died in past campaigns led the parade and was followed by veterans from many of the conflicts Australia has been involved with.

About 200 US Marines are stationed in Darwin, and two platoons of Americans, about 90 people, took part in Anzac Day proceedings today.

After dealing with temperatures from minus 15C to 50C in the deserts of Afghanistan, Sean Starling is glad he is now back in Darwin.

Lance Corporal Starling was one of hundreds who lined Darwin’s streets to watch the Anzac day parade, although he prefers not to march in it himself.

He served in Uruzgan province in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2011.

”It is important to show support for the old diggers,” he said when asked why he came.

”They are the blokes who really did it tough.”

Source: www.news.com.au