Lest we forget

This morning I was woken at 3am, merely two-and-a-half hours after having gone to sleep (an by now I should have known that “I’ll go to bed at nine” just ain’t gonna happen). I left the house at 3,30am. At the bus stop I met an elderly couple, Kay and Bob, and ended up staying with them for the morning.

I arrived at Martin Place cenotaph at 4am, one in thirty-five thousand. We tried to get as close as we could but in a sea of damp people it wasn’t easy. The service began at 4,30am because that is when ANZAC troops landed at Gallipoli.

Wending their way home after an ANZAC Eve function in the early hours of ANZAC Day 1927, ive members of the Australian Legion of Ex-Service Clubs…observed an elderly woman laying a sheaf of flowers on the cenotaph. One of them asked the woman if she would allow them to join her in tribute and all bowed their heads in silent prayers.

At a subsequent meeting of the Legion, it was decided that a Wreath Laying Ceremony would take place at the Sydney cenotaph at 0430 hours every ANZAC Day. This was the time that the first troops landed at Anzac Cove in 1915.

In 1928, 150 people were present, and in the following year an open invitation brought 250…By 1935, the 20th anniversary of ANZAC, attendance had reached 10,000 and in 1939, with the threat of another war, 20,000 were there.

As the speeches started, rain came down and a sea of umbrellas went up like a giant roof covering us all. After a short time I had to sit down on the wet ground, leaving half my right leg waterlogged and cold. At the end of the service the street lights were turned off as the Last Post played on the bugle—it has always given me the chills—followed by a minute’s silence.

I didn’t have a wreath to lay at the cenotaph, so I lay a sprig of rosemary for Pop alongside the wreaths. Kay informed me I was “obviously well brought up” for getting up at such a ridiculously early hour to go to the dawn service, and at my age no less. “Well”, I said, “the ANZACS will be dead soon. Then the WW2 vets, and so on. And someone has to remember them. That is why I’m going today.”

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.

Lest we forget.