All service people honoured on ANZAC Day

Antipodean Andy · Apr 28, 2008

A nation turns out to honour its veterans | The Australian

EACH year since 1946, Eric Duffell has attended the dawn service at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance.

Yesterday, as a perfect morning sky cast its rosy hue over the crowd of 40,000 people, Mr Duffell stood with his son Peter and niece Jocelyn Hannemann to acknowledge Australian soldiers who died at war.

Mr Duffell served in the 30th infantry brigade in New Guinea, then as a member of the 2nd Australian Field Company in the southwest Pacific. Described by his son as a very humble man, the 88-year-old never wears his service medals. "Oh, I don't need to wear them, they're in a tin box somewhere," Mr Duffell said after yesterday's service.

But as he waited patiently to enter the shrine's sanctuary, his soldier status was discovered. "Hey, mate, can we let this gentleman through? He's a veteran," one young man asked an official. The crowd parted to let Mr Duffell up the stairs and into the shrine, where he lay a poppy beside the stone of remembrance.

A couple of people patted him on the back - a gesture that on any other day might have seemed patronising or unnecessary. Yesterday, it made complete sense.

At dawn services around the country, veterans from many conflicts were acknowledged. Ms Hannemann was there for her uncle, but also to honour her late father-in-law who fought in the German army during World War II. "On a morning like this, you think of all the people on both sides who fought for their countries," she said.

From the Bundaberg RSL to Kings Park overlooking Perth's Swan River, dawn service crowds promised never to forget. In towns such as Kununurra in the east Kimberley and Batemans Bay on the NSW south coast, in parks, main streets and grand public memorials such as Melbourne's shrine, community gatherings became private moments of reflection.

At Torquay on Victoria's southwest coast, several thousand people gathered on the clifftop at Point Danger. Among those who attended were Jan and Steve Curtain, who have a holiday house at nearby Jan Juc.

Ms Curtain's mother, Anna Schofield, served as a nurse during World War II. Granny, as she was known by her six children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, spent two years in the Palestine region as a member of the 2/1st CCS (Casualty Clearing Station).

"She was on the front line, it was tough," her daughter said.

"This was where the injured soldiers came for immediate attention before they were sent off to proper hospitals ... I'm very proud of Granny, and she was very proud to have served, too."

On April 26 last year, the day after Anzac Day, Schofield died, aged 94. Her funeral was standing-room only, and included a handful of colleagues she nursed with during the war.

Like so many veterans, Schofield did not like to talk about her experiences. Her husband died young, leaving her with six children (the youngest, Ms Curtain, was only five). Life as a solo parent and breadwinner was too busy for war talk.

Peter Duffell said his father, like Schofield, was reluctant to discuss his army experiences. "But it's interesting: he (Eric) has started to talk about it with his grandchildren ... and they love it. I think they'll remember those stories. That's how Anzac Day stays alive."
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Antipodean Andy · Apr 28, 2008

Where they fell, Diggers honoured | The Australian

AT Lone Pine at Gallipoli, Hellfire Pass in Thailand and Bomana War Cemetery in Papua New Guinea, Australians gathered to remember what Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon called the "mateship, courage and valour" of Australian soldiers but also to "acknowledge the folly of state-on-state war".

Anzac Day services were held in many parts of the world where, during the 20th century, more than 1.5 million Australian men and women served in eight major wars or conflicts.

Soldiers of the Brisbane-based 2/14th Light Horse Regiment marked Anzac Day just north of Basra, in southern Iraq. The regiment, which forms part of the Overwatch Battle Group, had to run its regular patrols to protect the strategic airbase of Tallil.

"It's a very high-risk area," Warrant Officer Brad Clarke told The Weekend Australian last night. "The guys haven't taken their eyes off the ball."

At the Tallil base, the day started with a traditional "gunfire breakfast" of rum and coffee, followed by a dawn service, bacon and eggs, and games of two-up.

When the patrols swapped over, those soldiers coming back from duty on the streets were set for a barbecue and two beers each, and a "desert Ashes" cricket game against a British unit.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics put out an unusual release, calculating that in the last century more than 100,000 Australians died in action, more than 200,000 were wounded and more than 30,000 were taken prisoner across the eight conflicts. The ABS also noted that war was a time when many young couples took the view that marriage was now or never. The highest rate of marriage recorded in Australia was 12 per 1000 people in 1942, compared with 5.5 marriages per thousand in 2006.

At the birthplace of the Anzac legend, thousands of people, many swathed in blankets or sleeping bags, gathered in the pre-dawn chill on the shores of the Aegean Sea at Gallipoli for the annual dawn service.

Mr Fitzgibbon, in an address shown live on TV, said Australians stood in awe of the commitment and courage exhibited by the Diggers as well as their enemy, the Turks, who were defending their homeland.

As dawn began to break, Mr Fitzgibbon said that of the 60,000 Australians who landed at Gallipoli, 8709 had died, while of the 8500 New Zealanders who fought there, 2721 lost their lives.

Later in the morning, the Gallipoli crowd moved to a wreath-laying ceremony on a sunny but breezy day at Lone Pine, where Australian soldiers fought and won one of the fiercest battles of the 1915 campaign.

In Papua New Guinea, Kokoda trekkers swelled numbers at the dawn service at the Bomana War Cemetery. Almost 500 people attended the service.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, along with others who have been in the country for the PNG-Australia government ministers forum this week, laid a wreath and extolled the virtues of those young Australian men who made the supreme sacrifice. An eerie mist blanketed the 3000 graves of young Australians who fell in PNG during World War II.
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