ANZAC DAY 2010

Today being ANZAC Day is a day which I feel very strongly about as acrss Australia the significance of the day seems to get stronger as the years pass.

Each year for almost a decade I have attended dawn service at the War Veterans Home in Adelaide. The association with the WV homes began when I started working in the kitchen there. Many of my fellow staff and the nursing staff have since moved on to other jobs or ventures but return each year to celebrate the victories and losses of the ANZACS with the former airmen, sailors and soldiers from war past. The men, women and ancestors from both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam are all well represented.

Much panic was caused by the Icelandic volcano eruption, travellers whose plans to get to Turkey were disrupted and the numbers of visitors to ANZAC Cove could have been disrupted but thankfully the air cleared enough to get the many passengers into Turkey for the ceremony to mark another significant anniversary year, 95 years since the first landing of brave young men at Gallipoli.

As the years go on many thousands of people venture to ANZAC Cove each year but being there on the 25th of April must be something special. ANZAC Day 2010 bought 7000 people to Gallipoli and thousands of Australians to other former battlegrounds across Europe or to dawn services held in Australia. Listening to the service this morning as the chaplain spoke he indicated the change of significance that this day will have in decades to come. All world War 1 veterans are now deceased, the population of World War 2 veterans declines and the veterans of the wars in Korea and Vietnam get the recognition they felt lacking for many years ANZAC Day and it meaning has evolved from one of camaraderie to rememberance and history.

If there is no other reason for history to be taught in our schools then war is a very good reason, as unfortunately war will always be a part of our world but as Rememberance Day (November 11th) atests when there is war peace also has a place and for the 3000 men and women who are currently in combat deserve the same recognition that the diggers of our past have recieved for the last 95 years.

ANZAC Day 2010 ... May we never forget what our soldiers of today and the ordinary men and women who either enrolled to serve or were conscripted did by serving their country