A special day of Anzac memories

- 93rd Anzac Day - World War I - HMAS Sydney - Villers-Bretonneux - Gallipoli - Turkey - Anzac legend -

Friday - 25 April 2008 - Australian

A TINY village in rural France and a rusting hulk on the floor of the Indian Ocean provided two poignant focal points for Australians commemorating the 93rd Anzac Day.

Both represented firsts - one a tribute for World War I diggers who lie in the fields of the Somme, the other for World War II sailors whose tombstone is the recently discovered wreck of HMAS Sydney.

Such is the legacy of Australian heroism that the village of Villers-Bretonneux has a kangaroo as its emblem, and every school classroom bears the sign: “N'oublions pas l'Australie” - Never forget Australia.

They never have, and never was that more evident than today at the first official dawn service held there, marking the 90th anniversary of the day Australian troops recaptured the town from the Germans, halting their advance on Paris.

The Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey, where the Anzac legend was born on April 25, 1915, captures most of the attention these days as thousands of Aussies make the annual pilgrimage.

But Villers-Bretonneux, where diggers triumphed on the same day three years later, may now strike a blow for the Western Front, where Australian casualties were far higher - five times worse.

“By the end of the war, our forces on the Western Front lost more than 46,000 men, from a population of only five million,” Veterans Affairs Minister Alan Griffin told the service.

“It must be said that our strong connection with the Anzacs at Gallipoli has, over the years, overshadowed our commemoration of the Australians who gave so much on the Western Front.”

Mr Griffin told French guests: “Long ago, you promised that the memory of the Australians who fought and died here would be kept alive”.

“You have kept your promise.”

Gallipoli remains a magnet for young Australians, New Zealanders and Turks, with a crowd of around 10,000 today making it the biggest attendance since 2005.

Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon told those present - many wrapped in sleeping bags to ward off the chill - that the original Anzacs had raised global consciousness of the Australian character.

“Even during the darkest hours they brought larrikinism, irreverence and dry humour to one of the toughest places on earth,” he said.

Mr Fitzgibbon said Australians stood in awe of the courage shown by diggers and Turks, who fought a “brutal and ugly war, remembered as much as anything for the strategic mistakes of its leaders and the high human costs of victories and defeats alike”.
At services in Australia, thoughts turned to the 645 sailors who died in the Australian Navy's greatest disaster, the sinking of HMAS Sydney by the German raider Kormoran off the West Australian coast on November 19, 1941.

This was the first Anzac Day when the crew's descendants knew the exact fate of their forebears after the ship's discovery last month solved a 66-year mystery.

HMAS Sydney was the subject of an Anzac eve remembrance service at Sydney's St Andrew's Cathedral, where mourners were led by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the cathedral bell pealed 645 times - once for each man lost.

The Sydney took pride of place in many of today's parades.

The Melbourne march, for example, was led by two 88-year-olds, Allen Guthrie and Ken Brown, who served on the cruiser before its demise.

“It's been exhilarating, and sometimes a little bit sombre. There's a lot to think about,” said Mr Guthrie as he climbed into the back seat of an open air blue Rolls-Royce.

“But I'm very proud and humbled.”

In Sydney, Joan O'Donnell carried a photograph of her father, Chief Petty Officer Edward O'Brien, and remembered how handsome he looked as he set sail for the last time from Sydney in February, 1941.

Ms O'Donnell, who was 13 that day, said: “It was wonderful, it was a holiday for everybody at school and there were thousands and thousands of people.

“I just remember all the sailors in their white.

“They looked good, so good.”

It was a day of both lasts and firsts.

Governor-General and commander-in-chief Michael Jeffery, who steps down in September, made an emotional swansong visit to troops in Afghanistan as he prepared to “hang up his military boots” after a 54-year association with the defence forces.

At Tarin Kowt he paid special tribute to four troops who have died fighting Taliban forces, including Sergeant Matthew Locke, 33, who he had presented with his SAS beret and then awarded with a gallantry medal 10 months before his death last October.

“That was very sad for me,” Maj Gen Jeffery said later, adding that military deaths “cut very deep, particularly if they are people you have known or trained or been in your unit”.

Another of the four soldiers, Trooper David Pearce, killed in Afghanistan six months ago, was remembered on the Gold Coast where his wife Nicole and daughters Stephanie, 12, and Hanna, six, laid a wreath at dawn.

“It's an emotional roller-coaster,” said Ms Pearce, “but today's not just about us”.

Mr Rudd used his first Anzac Day address to declare that Australia's war history confirmed it as a nation of good people.

Mr Rudd spoke not just of the 100,000 whose lives were lost in war but the million who had gone to war.

“We are a good people who want for the good of others, we stand for a deep sense of liberty for which our forebears fought and which should never be surrendered, whatever the cost,” Mr Rudd told a crowd of 20,000 at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

Australia's last surviving World War I soldier, 109-year-old Jack Ross, is not spry enough to get into a car these days.

But he watched the march from his bed in a Ballarat nursing home with the perfect accompaniment - a cup of tea and an Anzac biscuit.

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