Keeping the Flag Flying...

Keeping the Flag Flying...

Thursday 23 April 2015

1915 - 2015 Honouring Our Heroes 100 Years on: ANZAC Day in Athens, Greece


An ANZAC soldier stands tall 
as tall and straight as Europe's omnipresent red poppies 
From the Sound and light show 
at Wellington's National War Memorial and Carillon


This year marks the centenary of the Gallipoli Campaign by the ANZACs

The ANZAC tradition – the ideals of courage, endurance and comradeship that are still relevant today – was established on 25 April 1915 when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula, using Lemnos island as a support base.

It was the start of a gruelling campaign that lasted eight months and would result in thousands of Australian and New Zealand casualties and deaths.  Their memory and sacrifices are honoured at ceremonies around the world each year on 25 April.
 

Lest we forget....


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,We will remember them...

Australia New Zealand Army Corps

Lest we forget....



The Australian Embassy has invited New Zealanders and Australians and friends of both countries to attend the ANZAC Day Commemorative Celebrations

on

Saturday 25 April 2015, 11.00 a.m.

at

The Commonwealth War Cemetery

in

Alimos

(Posidonos Avenue and Ethnarhou Makariou Street)

Let's all be there, as we are every year, to honour the memory of those valiant young men who came to the other side of the world to fight , not just in World War I but in World War II as well, so that we could be free.



 ANZAC Day 2014
Hellenic New Zealand Association member Robyn Gray
lays the Association's wreath at the ceremony in Athens 
Photo Courtesy Sharon Marsden Chelmis  



ANZAC Day
 Anzac Day marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War, and is held every year on April 25th around the world. Read more


 Photos below are from the amazing sound and light show at Wellington's National War Museum and Carillon this week.
Photos Courtesy George Kanelos



1914: World War I begins...

 Places... where NZ soldiers fought and fell...

Medals...for heroism in faraway places

Lest we forget....

Let's remember too that this year also commemorates 100 years from the first 'modern' genocide, that of the 1.5 million Armenian, 700 thousand Greek and 500 thousand Assyrian Christians who were slaughtered or expelled from the Pontos in the first systematic ethnic cleansing of the 20th century by the Turkish army as they sought to 'purify' their land of peoples who had lived there for centuries. 

Massacres, forced deportations, death marches, summary expulsions, arbitrary executions and the destruction of Christian Orthodox cultural, historical and religious monuments were just a few of the 'weapons' chosen by the Young Turks to bring about this genocide... a genocide which has been recognised by the International Association of Genocide Scholars in 2007, and by Greece, Cyprus, Holland, Sweden, Armenia, France and Germany, the EU Parliament and Pope Frances recently but which Turkey still refuses to acknowledge...