ANZAC day

On 25 April 1915 (during WWI), an Australia New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed in Gallipolli, Turkey. They were planning to defeat the Turks. However, the ANZACs had bitten off more than they could chew, because the Turks turned out to be quite a bit stronger than they had expected. After a year of struggle that got them nowhere (literally) and a tremendous loss of lives on both sides, the ANZACs withdrew.

Even though the whole exercise was a military fiasco for Australia and NZ, this battle has become a symbol of the devotion and the sacrifices that their troops have made for their country. To commemorate this, NZ and Australia celebrate ANZAC day on the day the troops landed in Gallipolli.

ANZAC day has become a national bank holiday in NZ on which not only WWI is remembered but also all other wars NZ has fought in (for example, NZ also fought in Vietnam alongside the Americans). Throughout the country wreaths are laid on war memorials, and in Christchurch too of course.

However, you have to be an early bird if you want to attend these services. The dawn-services are held at 6:00 AM!! That is the time at which the soldiers landed ashore back then. Apart from it being the landing time, it has a nice symbolic meaning too: during the service the sun comes up, and even as life goes on in a fresh day, we will continue to remember them, we will not forget. So even though the time is inconveniently early, it makes it all pretty special. As part of our self-inflicted integration we dragged ourselves out of bed at 5:00 AM.

In Christchurch the service started with a dawn parade of veterans at 6:00 AM near Cathedral Square. The veterans marched towards the Square, where the commemorative ceremony started at 6:30. We had taken a position where we had a nice view of the start of the parade. In hindsight that was a bad choice. The start of the parade was two streets away from Cathedral Square. When we finally were able to walk to the Square ourselves (following the parade), it already had filled up completely. The organisers clearly hadn't expected this number of people to attend (8000), because the tiny sound system that they had set up only served the people in the centre of the square! As a result we just stood there for 45 minutes, not seeing anything, listening to some far away incomprehensible mumbling and some far away background music. Right…

Oh well, we have successfully completed our integration task today… time to go back to bed! :-)