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Thousands gather for ANZAC Day memorials around world


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Thousands gather for ANZAC Day memorials around world

 

2018-04-25T050409Z_1_LYNXMPEE3O0AL_RTROPTP_4_ANZAC-DAY-TURKEY.JPG

Australian and New Zealand soldiers stand guard during a dawn ceremony marking the 103rd anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign during World War One at Anzac Cove, Turkey, April 25, 2018, where the first battles of the campaign were fought. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

 

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Thousands of people attended dawn war memorial services on Wednesday across Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, France and in Thailand to commemorate ANZAC Day, the Gallipoli landings and the centenary of the final year of World War One.

 

On April 25, 1915, thousands of troops from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey, where they fought under their own flags for the first time.

 

The date is seared into the national consciousness as a point where the two nations emerged from the shadow of the British empire, and has become a solemn anniversary to remember troops from both countries who served and died in all wars.

 

An estimated 44,000 Allied soldiers were killed in the Gallipoli campaign, according to the Australian War Memorial.

 

At the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, World War One soldiers were honoured with excerpts from their diaries, read before the dawn service, to commemorate 100 years since the last battles before the Armistice was declared in November 1918.

 

In France, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull took part in a dawn service to mark the Battle of Villers-Bretonneux in World War One. Some 2,400 Australians died in the overnight battle on April 24, 1918, to retake the town from German forces.

 

"We particularly remember those who lost their lives or came home wounded, and we acknowledge the hardship and pain borne by their families and loved ones," Turnbull said in a video message posted on Facebook.

 

World War Two veterans, some of them former prisoners of war (POWs), gathered in Thailand's western province of Kanchanaburi to remember the thousands of POWs and Asian laborers who died when Japanese occupying forces put them to work on the infamous "death railway", a supply route to Japanese troops in the then Burma, now Myanmar.

 

“I get quite emotional at the dawn service as dawn is breaking. I think of all of the friends, and my mates, as we call them, that were left on the railway,” said Australian Neil McPherson, 96, a former POW.

 

Harold Martin, aged 101, said: “I’d like to say a word for the ordinary soldiers that were up there because there were a lot of heroes that were never mentioned."

 

(Reporting by Alison Bevege in SYDNEY, Juarawee Kittisilpa in Kanchanaburi,and Amy Sawitta Lefevre in BANGKOK; Editing by Michael Perry)

 
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-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-04-25
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Public holiday   and  always Collingwood versus Essendon in the football.

Australia is a vastly different  country from the WW2  days.

Not a topic of conversation with most Australians.

We should never have fought for the British in Europe.

ANZAC day will eventually die away same as the veterans.

Sad but true.

 

 

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18 hours ago, PREM-R said:

I think you are right, people have not forgotten what happened in the past.  2018 is 100 years since the end of WW1, people of all ages still respect those who got themselves killed or maimed fighting for their country.  Will they continue to remember in another 100 years?  I hope they do.

The UK using the Australian troops as cannon fodder.

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19 hours ago, lanista said:

Public holiday   and  always Collingwood versus Essendon in the football.

Australia is a vastly different  country from the WW2  days.

Not a topic of conversation with most Australians.

We should never have fought for the British in Europe.

ANZAC day will eventually die away same as the veterans.

Sad but true.

 

 

ANZAC will never die away as long as the world continues to kill themselves. For ANZACS the last major conflict was Vietnam, before that Korea. Since those days we have had men in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria and have lost young lives there.

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13 minutes ago, tigermoth said:

ANZAC will never die away as long as the world continues to kill themselves. For ANZACS the last major conflict was Vietnam, before that Korea. Since those days we have had men in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria and have lost young lives there.

 

And sadly, given the amount of ongoing conflicts currently around the world, plus some muscle flexing by a few big boys posturing to either retain or increase their influence and power, it's looking likely another major war is coming.

 

Political leaders never learn because it's rarely them that suffer.

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