FED:VC hero salutes 96 years of Anzac bravery

AAP General News (Australia)
04-25-2011
FED:VC hero salutes 96 years of Anzac bravery

By Doug Conway, Senior Correspondent, and AAP reporters

SYDNEY, April 25 AAP - Australia's newest military hero has saluted the oldest and
delivered a stark reminder that Australians are still locked in deadly combat 96 years
after the Anzac legend began.

As more than 100,000 Australians, roughly the same number to have died in war, gathered
at Anzac Day services around the world, Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith marched in Sydney's
parade for the first time since winning the Victoria Cross in Afghanistan last year.

He honoured not only the original Anzacs who stormed ashore at Gallipoli in 1915 but
all who have served since, including 10 of his comrades who have died in Afghanistan in
the past year.

"Acts of real courage are still being carried out on the front line today and every
day," he said.

"I have friends who will be putting their lives at risk today as they try to ensure
that terrorism does not flourish."

Cpl Roberts-Smith, who single-handedly stormed an enemy machine gun position in Afghanistan,
described public support during the march as "overwhelming".

The feeling was clearly mutual as teenage defence force cadets surrounded him afterwards,
calling him a hero and an inspiration.

"It (meeting him) made my day," said cadet Madison Hollamby, 14.

From Australia to the shores of Gallipoli and battle sites in Asia and Europe, Australians
remembered all of their war dead, but the grief from losses in Afghanistan is the most
recent and clearly the keenest.

Margaret Gunnell choked back tears as she attended Brisbane's dawn service, the first
since her son, commando Tim Aplin, was among three diggers killed in a helicopter crash
there last June.

"I didn't ever imagine this would be happening to me, or to us, losing our boy," Ms Gunnell said.

"I really wish I was here just as a person who came to feel for the Anzacs."

Similar emotions were felt in Hobart, where Tasmanian Governor Peter Underwood paid
tribute to Corporal Richard Atkinson, 22, who was killed by a roadside bomb two months
ago.

"The devastation that his family and his fiancee feel is beyond the understanding of
those who've not suffered a loss like (theirs)," he said.

"Today we thank him for his service. What a terrible loss of a young life."

At Anzac Cove in Turkey, Veterans' Affairs Minister Warren Snowdon said the Anzacs
could never have known the enduring legacy of their courage, service and sacrifice.

"It behoves us to accept the responsibility to do whatever we can to avoid war and
find peaceful resolution to our differences," he said.

"This is how we can honour them."

At the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, RAAF chaplain Wing Commander Mark Willis
paid tribute to those who put freedom for others before their own interests.

"Just ordinary people doing their job, ordinary men and women who were prepared to
make personal sacrifices for the freedom and quality of life that we enjoy today," he
said.

Delivering the commemorative address, war historian Les Carlyon said Anzac Day was
all about remembering ordinary, decent Australians.

"Every grave represents someone's son or uncle or father or husband," he said.

"Every grave represents sacrifice in perhaps its saddest form, the death of dreams of youth."

Prime Minister Julia Gillard honoured Australia's Korean War veterans at a stirring
dawn service in Seoul where she said silence spoke loudest on Anzac Day.

"In our silence today we remember those we have lost," Ms Gillard said in the 60th
anniversary year of the battle of Kapyong, one of Australia's major engagements of the
campaign.

"Each of them one of us; each of them lost to us now.

"Each in essence an ordinary Australian who we asked to do an extraordinary thing."

In Villers-Bretonneux, France, scene of a critical Australia victory in World War One,
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said: "We come to honour the values for which they fought
- for freedom, for a fair go for all, values which we hold to be true for all humankind,
not just for some.

"The cost of all this, quite literally, almost bled our fledging nation dry."

Anzac Day services went off mostly without incident, but a 67-year-old returned serviceman
collapsed and died after attending a dawn service in Darwin.

AAP dc/apm

KEYWORD: ANZAC WRAP

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