25/04/2025
More on ANZAC Day commemmorations
A group of hundreds of Australians and New Zealanders crossed from Çanakkale city center to the Gallipoli Peninsula at night.
The participants waited in their sleeping bags and blankets for the "Dawn Service" to begin, watching documentaries, films, and interviews about the Gallipoli Campaign, as well as Anzac Day ceremonies in Australia and New Zealand, on a giant screen set up in the ceremony area.
In her speech at the program that started at dawn, the Royal Princess Anne of the United Kingdom said that the soldiers who fought on these lands 110 years ago were not forgotten and that they would be remembered.
Australian Governor-General Samantha Mostyn also described how soldiers from both sides showed extraordinary courage and sacrifice at Gallipoli.
Mostyn emphasized that over time, Gallipoli became a place dominated by fear, disease, smoke and death for the soldiers, and said, "They described the horrors of war in the letters they wrote home. The lines they wrote, or did not dare to write, or perhaps could not complete because they did not survive, revealed the most human emotions. Fear, longing and astonishment.
"We must do everything we can to ensure that something like this never happens again."
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon also spoke about the day of the ANZAC landing on 25 April 1915 as follows:
"When the sun rose and the shadows from the valleys dispersed, what greeted them was not adventure but terror. Unlike the peace we feel today, they were met with a hail of bullets. Each bullet seemed closer than the last. Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, but only for those who could survive that long."
Source: Anadolu Agency
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