They went with songs to the battle, they were young, Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow. They went staunch to the end against odds uncounted, They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old, Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.
Lest We Forget.
April 25, Anzac Day, the most important day of the year in Australia. It is celebrated likewise in neighbouring New Zealand. It is day when all Australians and New Zealanders, young and old, remember those who in service of country and Empire went to war and those who didn't return.
The names Gallipoli, Lone Pine, Simpson and his donkey stir the hearts of Australians everywhere and for New Zealanders especially Chunuk Bair. Thousands of people attend dawn services on Anzac Day at Cenotaphs and war memorials around the country and thousands of veterans take part in marches watched by cheering crowds.
It is a day to remember fallen comrades, to remember fallen relatives and to honour all those who served in all wars, living and dead, and a day to play two-up in the pubs and clubs. The only day of the year when the traditional Australian gambling game of two-up can be legally played.
Australians have sent the flower of their youth to many wars over the last 150 years and now on UN peacekeeping missions.
In the nineteenth century to the Maori Wars in New Zealand, Khartoum in Sudan with the British General Gordon, at the beginning of the twentieth century to the Boer War in South Africa.
In the twentieth century they fought in the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, the Suez Crisis, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War. Recently Australian naval vessels went to the Solomon Islands to resue civilians from the civil unrest there. Australian army medical teams went to Rwanda to work in the refugee camps in 1994. In the twenty-first Australian troops are still serving as peacekeepers in East Timor and Bougainville in New Guinea.
But the defining campaign for Australia was the Gallipoli campaign starting on the 25 April 1915 in the Great War, World War I.
The legend of Anzac was born on the beaches and heights of Gallipoli, on the Dardanelles in Turkey on 25th April 1915 and the following weeks during the Great War. Anzac stands for Australian New Zealand Army Corps.
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