Greetings from Australia and New Zealand on Anzac Day 2020.
Anzac Day – 25 April
Anzac Day is a time for the community to come together to remember and recognise the service and sacrifice of members of the Australian Defence Force. Originally a commemoration of the landing of Australian and New Zealand forces on Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, Anzac Day is a public expression of gratitude and reflection resonates to the present day.
About Anzac Day
ANZAC is an acronym and stands for Australian New Zealand Army Corps, the name given to the body of troops raised by the two countries to aid the British Empire in the Great War. Throughout the war Australian and New Zealand troops, or 'Diggers' and 'Kiwis', would live, fight and die alongside each other creating a bond that still exists today between the two nations.
Anzac Day is also inextricably linked with the landings at Gallipoli in the Dardanelles Strait on the 25th April 1915. On this day ANZAC troops were committed to their first major action of the war, and though the campaign would ultimately prove a bloody failure and leave more than 8,000 Australians dead, it marked the beginning of the Anzac legend.
This legend was poignantly put into words by Sir William Deane, Governor-General of Australia on Anzac Day 1999:
"Anzac is not merely about loss. It is about courage, and endurance, and duty, and love of country, and mateship, and good humour and the survival of a sense of self-worth and decency in the face of dreadful odds."
https://www.shrine.org.au/Remembrance/Anzac-Day-%E2%80%93-25-April
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The recitation (including the Ode)
In most ceremonies of remembrance there is a reading of an appropriate poem.
One traditional recitation on Anzac Day is the Ode, the fourth stanza of the poem 'For the fallen' by Laurence Binyon (1869–1943). Binyon was the assistant keeper of prints and drawings at the British Museum, and the author of several volumes of verse. 'For the fallen' was first published in the London Times in 1914 and later in many anthologies of war verse. It was selected in 1919 to accompany the unveiling of the London Cenotaph and, like so many memorial traditions, passed into common use across the Commonwealth. Its use on Anzac Day might have originated with the Queensland Anzac Day Commemoration Committee, which printed the poem on the cover of a collection of sermons and addresses for Anzac Day, published in 1921. Binyon’s poem was also read at the laying of the Inauguration Stone at the Memorial in 1929.
The most well-known lines are:
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.
https://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/customs-and-ceremony/recitation
https://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/customs-and-ceremony/poems
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The Last Post
In military tradition, the Last Post is the bugle call that signifies the end of the day's activities. It is also sounded at military funerals to indicate that the soldier has gone to his final rest and at commemorative services such as Anzac Day and Remembrance Day.
The Last Post is one of a number of bugle calls in military tradition that mark the phases of the day. While Reveille signals the start of a soldier's day, the Last Post signals its end.
The Last Post was eventually incorporated into funeral and memorial services as a final farewell, and symbolises the duty of the dead is over and they can rest in peace.
https://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/customs-and-ceremony/last-post