ANZAC Day 2011

Australians at War.

Information on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial from the Somme official website.

ANZAC Day History, from the Somme official website.

About the Dawn Service.

Find more about sites beyond The Somme Fromelles, Bullecourt, Passchendaele, Arras (Wellington Quarry).

Pheasant Wood war graves, Fromelles.

For the Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

England mourns for her dead across the sea.

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.

There is music in the midst of desolation

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

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.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;

They sit no more at familiar tables at home;

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain.

Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

I found this in a book I have:

`Now That You Too'

Now that you too must shortly go the way
Which in these bloodshot years uncounted men
Have gone in vanishing armies day by day,
And in their numbers will not come again:
I must not strain the moments of our meeting
Striving for each look, each accent, not to miss,
Or question of our parting and our greeting,
Is this the last of all? is this--or this?

Last sight of all it may be with these eyes,
Last touch, last hearing, since eyes, hands, and ears,
Even serving love, are our mortalities,
And cling to what they own in mortal fears:--
But oh, let end what will, I hold you fast
By immortal love, which has no first or last.

Elanor Farjeon


Australian poets wrote:

The Company of Lovers

We meet and part now over all the world;

we, the lost company,

take hands together in the night, forget

the night in our brief happiness, silently.

We, who sought many things, throw all away

for this one thing, one only,

remembering that in the narrow grave

we shall be lonely.

Death marshals up his armies round us now.

Their footsteps crowd too near.

Lock your warm hand above the chilling heart

and for a time I live without my fear.

Grope in the night to find me and embrace,

for the dark preludes of the drums begin,

and round us round the company of lovers,

death draws his cordons in.

Judith Wright

From Five Bells

Where have you gone? The tide is over you,

The turn of midnight water's over you,

As Time is over you, and mystery,

And memory, the flood that does not flow.

You have no suburb, like those easier dead

In private berths of dissolution laid -

The tide goes over, the waves ride over you

And let their shadows down like shinimg hair,

But they are Water; and the sea-pinks bend

Like lilies in your teeth, but they are Weed;

And you are only part of an Idea.

I felt the wet push its black thumb-balls in,

The night you died, I felt your eardrums crack,

And the short agony, the longer dream,

The Nothing that was neither long nor short;

But I was bound, and could not go that way,

But I was blind, and could not feel your hand.

If I could find an answer, could only find

Your meaning, or could say why you were here

Who now are gone, what purpose gave you breath

Or seized it back, might I not hear your voice?

Ken Slessor