Six Word Saturday

 

Lest we forget. ANZAC Day 2020

“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.”
LAWRENCE BINYON 1869-1943,
English poet, dramatist and art scholar.

I have written about ANZAC Day most years since I started blogging in 2011.

April 25 is a special day here in New Zealand and Australia. celebrating,  commemorating, and remembering all those who have fought, suffered and died in all wars. In both countries, it is a Public Holiday. Services of Remembrance are held throughout both lands. And on this day in Gallipoli in Turkey, those brave souls who suffered and the many who died there are also remembered by the laying of wreaths at the Gallipoli Memorial.

On April 25, 1915, thousands of young men, far from their homes, stormed the beaches on the Gallipoli Peninsula in what is now Turkey.

For eight long months, New Zealand troops, alongside those from Australia, Great Britain and Ireland, France, India, and Newfoundland battled harsh conditions and Ottoman forces desperately fighting to protect their homeland.

But this year during the Covid-19 pandemic all public commemorations have been cancelled. No poppies were sold but some of us had those from an earlier year and we wore them, and many homemade poppies have been seen this year.

The Prime Minister suggested that as we can’t go to the dawn services at war memorials people should stand at their gates or front doors at dawn in memory of the fallen.

A very different ANZAC Day but we will not forget.

 

Erratum

It’s 3am on Sunday 11 September 2016.  Waking in the night is not something I do with any regularity and today I awoke realising that I had made a mistake in yesterday’s post – Another Year On

Originally I wrote –

“On the eve of 9/11 many of us here in New Zealand are thinking of that tragic day in 2001 when so many lives were lost, so many lives were changed and the world as we knew it changed suddenly and forever.”

Then I chaged it to

“Of course yesterday it was 9/11 here in New Zealand, and  many of us were  thinking of that tragic day in 2001 when so many lives were lost, so many lives were changed and the world as we knew it changed suddenly and forever.”

Confusion because here in New Zealand we say 11/9 and those of you in North America say 9/11.  In any event everything else in yesterday’s post still stands and today we will remember those who lost their lives, those who helped rescue some and the people whose lives were changed forever.