27 Apr '18

Photo of the week: Remembering Gallipoli

Summary

Wednesday was Anzac Day, which found Australians and New Zealanders making their way to the Westhoek

 

National pride

Citizens from Australia and New Zealand gathered across the Westhoek in West Flanders on Wednesday for Anzac Day, their annual holiday honouring those who have died in war. The day, 25 April, marks the landing of troops in Gallipoli in 1915 during the First World War.

The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps were known for short as Anzacs. Gallipoli was the first significant battle in which Anzacs were involved in the First World War.

Anzac Day started in West Flanders with the traditional Dawn Service at Buttes New British Cemetery in Zonnebeke. Some 750 Anzac troops are buried there.

“I have a third cousin buried here,” one of hundreds of Australians and New Zealanders present told Focus/WTV news, “so it’s very special to be here for this occasion.”

“I think it’s important that there are so many people who still remember, and it goes on from generation to generation,” said another. “That’s just fantastic. And the bonds that we have with the Belgian people … it’s just very special.”

The Australian minister of veterans’ affairs, Darren Chester, was also present at the cemetery on Wednesday, as were a ambassadors from the countries as well as from European countries. Following the ceremony, those present could place a wooden cross, decorated by schoolchildren in West Flanders, on the graves.

Further commemoration events took place in Zonnebeke as well as Mesen and at the Menin Gate in Ypres.

Photo: The Dawn Service at Buttes New British Cemetery in Zonnebeke
©Sandro Delaere/BELGA

Now read this

First World War

Claiming the lives of more than nine million people and destroying entire cities and villages in Europe, the Great War was one of the most dramatic armed conflicts in human history. It lasted from 1914 to 1918.
Flanders Field - For four years, a tiny corner of Flanders known as the Westhoek became one of the war’s major battlefields.
Untouched - Poperinge, near Ypres, was one of the few towns in Flanders that remained unoccupied for most of the war.
Cemetery - The Tyne Cot graveyard in Passchendaele is the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world.
550 000

lives lost in West Flanders

368 000

annual visitors to the Westhoek

1 914

First Battle of Ypres

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