Jim Fagan
Early morning light flooded the bush outside the Community Hall at Verrierdale as close to 200 people assembled for the Anzac Day Dawn Service last Thursday. Kookaburras chattered in the gum trees and in a nearby paddock a steer bellowed a greeting to the day.
It was a Noosa hinterland moment in an Anzac Day ceremony repeated in thousands of towns, cities and rural communities as Australians came together to honour those who gave their lives in war.
Piper Mike MacDonald played the lament “Flowers of the Forest and “Waltzing Matilda,” Noosa Chorale sang “Abide With Me and our national anthem plus that of New Zealand. Schoolchildren and local group leaders laid wreaths and The Ode was read by retired RAAF Flight Lieutenant Mark Lloyd.
Retired Army Colonel Greg Molyneux CSC, who was guest speaker, summed up the horrors of war when he said, “The charge at The Nek at Gallipoli was a military disaster on an epic scale.
“It was our greatest military failure. A one-sided slaughter as men armed with only bayonets fought for a patch of earth the size of three tennis courts.
“Knowing death was imminent, they scratched last letters to loved ones and then went over the sandbags into a storm of lead.
“Four waves of 150 men each were ordered to charge the Turkish trenches just 27 metres away. By the time commanders realised the futility of the mission three waves had gone over the top in just 15 minutes and the entire battlefield was covered with dead and dying Australians
“The 8th LH Regiment suffered the highest casualties losing 234 of its 300 men in just a few awful minutes of needless bloodshed. That included 154 killed outright on an area of ground that measured only 80 metres wide and 27 metres deep.
“Conversely, not one millimetre of ground was captured, and virtually no enemy soldiers were hurt or killed.
“Such was the nature of the war at Gallipoli in 1915.”
Later in the morning Colonel Molyneux and Noosa Chorale took part in the Anzac Commemorative Service at Eumundi.
