There are few days on the Australian calendar more sacred than ANZAC Day. On 25 April every year, the nation stops to remember and commemorate the service and sacrifice of all Australians who have served in war and peace in the Australian armed forces.
Its origins are the landing of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) soldiers at Gallipoli on that first ANZAC Day on 25 April 1915. It has been celebrated every year on 25 April since.
While there are variations on this practice, for most towns and cities, there is a Dawn Service around 5am which commemorates the original landings around the same time they occurred on that first ANZAC Day at Gallipoli.
Later that morning, there is normally a march of serving personnel and veterans through the towns and cities throughout our nation. The march is followed by a service of commemoration. Then, veterans and service personnel retire to the closest Returned Services League club, drink (sometimes a lot), play two-up and tell tall tales about their service.
This year, I will be the reviewing officer for my local Anzac Day march and will give a short speech at the commemorative service. I wanted to share the speech I will give tomorrow morning with subscribers, and it is provided in full below.
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Anzac Day Speech 2023
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today, and to take the salute from the magnificent Australian soldiers and veterans this morning.
We stand here this morning on a beautiful, seaside location. As we look out across the waters of Moreton Bay, it not hard to imagine the view experienced by those very first Anzacs on that morning one hundred and eight years ago.
Before dawn on 25 April 1915, the first soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed on the shores of the Gallipoli peninsula.
The Allies' objective for the Gallipoli operation was to destroy Turkish guns that were preventing naval ships from reaching and bombarding the Turkish capital. The plan, if successful, was to force Turkey out of the war.
At Anzac Cove, among the first to land were the Queenslanders of the 9th Battalion in the 3rd Brigade. They were followed by thousands of their fellow soldiers in successive waves. By the end of that first terrible day, nearly 2000 Australians would be dead or wounded.
For the next eight months, our soldiers fought a slow moving but brutal campaign alongside their New Zealand, British, and French allies. But, by December 1915, realizing the campaign was at a stalemate, our Anzacs were evacuated in an operation celebrated for its creativity, secrecy, and success. By then, about 8700 Australians and almost 2700 New Zealanders had been killed.
They established a legend for themselves of toughness and battlefield discipline that was the envy of many other armies. As Charles Bean wrote in his official history of the war:
In the history of war there is no more signal example of reckless obedience than that given by the dismounted light horsemen at The Nek when, after having seen the whole first attacking line mown down within a few yards, the second, third and fourth lines each charged at the signal of its leaders, to certain destruction. But the diggers increased their effectiveness during the war. Indeed in 1918 an incident like The Nek could not have happened. By then, Australian leaders knew that these troops had the habit of reasoning why and not merely of doing and dying.
Australian soldiers were not just good soldiers, they were clever soldiers who expected good leadership. To the great fortune of our nation, they still do.
Anzac Day is one of the most important dates on Australia's calendar.
Initially, it provided an opportunity for Australians to honour and remember the original Anzacs. Thereafter it became a day for those who had served in the First World War, and eventually, a day to commemorate the sacrifice and service of all those who have served our nation.
Today at this hour, we reflect on that service. We remember the more than one hundred thousand Australian servicemen and women who have lost their lives in the service of our country. We honour the values invested in the first Anzacs – loyalty, selflessness, courage, mateship. And we commemorate the ways in which subsequent generations have measured their own achievements against those of the soldiers who fought in the trenches and gullies of Gallipoli.
Today we also give thanks to live in a nation that has been spared the kinds of unspeakable horrors that our friends in Ukraine are being subjected to. But, we also give thanks that successive generations of Australians have been willing to risk their own lives to deter or stop such aggression against their friends.
I would like to finish by again quoting Charles Bean, whose summary of the achievements of those first Anzacs has not been better described by those of us who have followed.
During four years in which nearly the whole world was so tested, the people in Australia looked on from afar at three hundred thousand of their own nation struggling amongst millions from the strongest and most progressive peoples of Europe and America. They saw their own flash across the world’s consciousness like a shooting star.
In the first straight rush up the Anzac hills in the dark, in the easy figures first seen on the ridges against the dawn, in things seen daily from that first morning until the struggle ended, onlookers had recognized in them qualities always vital to the human race.
Australians watched the name of their country rise high in the esteem of the world’s oldest and greatest nations. And the Australian nation came to know itself.
Our nation has changed a lot since then. Our military forces, serving in multiple wars over the succeeding 100 years, have changed significantly in their composition, their technologies, and their people. But their ethos of service remains.
It is an ethos important to our military, but also vital for our wider community. Those first Anzacs provide us all with exemplars of selfless dedication to friends, to community and to nation. We owe those who have sacrificed so much to live up to those ideals today, and every day.
Lest we forget.
Thank you General Ryan for this.
My grandfather, in the British Army, served at Galipoli and witnessed the horrors that have been well documented - and which I discovered more about after living in New Zealand for two years, 20 or so years ago. Particularly moving was the National Army Museum in Waiouru. My poor grandfather, by now a Lt Colonel, commanding the Artillery Garrison at Singapore in WW2, was then captured by the Japanese and spent four years building the Burma Railway, alongside many of your compatriots. Again, unspeakable horrors.
My other grandfather served as Gen Montgomery's Chief of Staff in North Africa and sadly died in 1946 due to illness contracted while serving.
It is so easy to take peace and security for granted - but I will be forever grateful to my forebears and others in the allied forces in WW1 and 2 - and subsequently.
Thank you for everything - and your fine continung analysis of the war in Ukraine!
Best regards, Peter.
Mick, a fitting tribute on ANZAC Day! And a small history lesson for those in the US. And while the observance originates with Gallipoli, those in the US should never forget Australia’s and New Zealand’s contributions and support against Japan in WW II.