Saturday, April 26, 2008, Rabi-ul-Sani 19, 1429    

Australia and New Zealand honour war dead

Sydney— Hundreds of thousands of Australians and New Zealanders honoured their war dead Friday at dawn services across the two nations and at battlefields around the globe where their soldiers have fallen.

The Anzac Day services began with a bugler sounding the Last Post at sunrise and included wreath-laying ceremonies and the recitation of the “Ode for the Fallen”, culminating in the line “we will remember them”.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd joined 30,000 people at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra to pay tribute to the 100,000 personnel who have died for their country since it became independent in 1901.“They were the best of us,” he said.There were similar scenes across Australia and New Zealand, both of which set aside Anzac Day as a public holiday so people can attend memorial events. It marks the date the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps—the Anzacs—landed at Gallipoli in Turkey in 1915 and engaged in a gruelling battle that was their first real test of World War One.

More than 8,000 Australians and 2,700 New Zealanders died, leaving a profound impression on two fledgling nations that still lingers, even though the casualty numbers were later eclipsed by the carnage on the Western Front.

Tens of thousands of people from both countries travelled to Turkey for a service at Gallipoli, many of them backpackers marking an event that has become a rite of passage for young people.

A special service was also planned in the northern French village of Villiers-Bretonneux to mark the 90th anniversary of Australian troops staging a nighttime raid to recapture it from German forces.—AFP