Anzac Day In Australia

-25 April, 1915 - January, 1916 - Gallipoli-

The sea had turned red with blood as the dead bodies dropped to the ground like stones; with wounds from the bullets constantly firing at them from the Turkish guns above on this fateful day; revealing the horror that was to come.

That was Gallipoli.

The date 25 April 1915 marks the landing of the Australians at 4.30am; and 9.30am for the New Zealanders at Gallipoli in 1915, as the 9 month war for the Dardanelles Straits and the Gallipoli Peninsula from Turkey began. This of course, signalling the start of the disastrous Dardanelles campaign on the Gallipoli Peninsula the second they set foot on land. This campaign saw thousands of ANZAC fatalities before its conclusion in January 1916. Significantly,

The first Anzac Day services were held in 1916 to commemorate the Gallipoli landings the year earlier. The Anzac Day Act 1920 made the day an official holiday from 1921 on, and shops, theatres, banks and hotels had to close. In the first few years after the war, Anzac Day was a solemn reminder of the many lives that had been lost. The Anzac Day ritual developed out of a sense of loss and sorrow. Families of those who died overseas had no graveside where they could stand and grieve. Anzac Day provided them with a day and place to do

In Australia, they hold the National Anzac Day ceremony at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. In New York, a service has even been held on the rooftop Anzac Garden of the British Empire Building in the Rockefeller Centre, and in 1965, a trip to mark the 50th anniversary of the Anzac landings was organised for 300 First World War veterans. They were met at the shore by four Australian hitchhikers, two boys and two girls, who had made their own way across Europe to be there. Each year since then, the number of visitors has increased. The Ari Burnu cemetery then became too small to hold them all and the new Anzac commemorative site was dedicated on Anzac Day, 2000. Thousands of people now make the pilgrimage to be at the dawn service to visit some of the many cemeteries and monuments, including the New Zealand memorials for the missing at Chunuk Bair, Twelve Tree Copse, Lone Pine and Hill 60. Turkish monuments and memorials include the Canakkale Sehitleri Aniti dedicated to the 250,000 Turkish soldiers who served during the campaign (in Turkey these soldiers are called