I just saw something interesting today - and only by virtue of being on this side of the world. When you type in "google.com" here you get redirected to "google.jp" and the search results are in Japanese. Since my Japanese hasn't improved sufficiently enough for that to be helpful, I have "google.com.au" as my home page so I get Australian google and therefore english results. Today they had a poppy at the bottom of the search block and hovering over it, it said "ANZAC Day". After a few seconds search, I saw what it was about. I had never actually heard of it.
Gallipoli
Upon the margin of a rugged shore
There is a spot now barren, desolate,
A place of graves, sodden with human gore
That Time will hallow, Memory consecrate.
There lie the ashes of the mighty dead,
The youth who lit with flame Obscurity,
Fought true for Freedom, won thro' rain of lead
Undying fame, their immortality.
The stranger wand'ring when the war is over,
The ploughman there driving his coulter deep,
The husbandman who golden harvests reap-
From hill and ravine, from each plain and cover
Will hear a shout, see phantoms on the marge,
See men again making a deathless charge.
John William Streets
Australian troops charging an Ottoman trench, just before the evacuation at Anzac.
"A trench at Lone Pine after the battle, showing Australian and Turkish dead on the parapet. In the foreground of this much published image is Captain Leslie Morshead (later Lieutenant General Sir Leslie Morshead) of the 2nd Battalion and on his right (standing facing camera), is 527 Private James (Jim) Brown Bryant, 8th Battalion, of Stawell, Vic. As a 60th Battalion ("daughter" or "pup" battalion of the 8th) Company Quartermaster Sergeant (CQMS) Bryant was awarded the Military Medal (MM) in 1918. He enlisted in the Second AIF as VX55299 Lieutenant J B Bryant, and survived three years as a prisoner of the Japanese in Changi Prison, Singapore. Bryant lent his camera to an unknown friend who took AWM image A03869, an equally famous image of the Gallipoli trenches. Later in life he was one of the few Gallipoli veterans to undertake a private pilgrimage to Anzac Cove. Private Bryant was previously identified as Private Angus Sutherland Allen, later (Captain Angus Sutherland Allen MC), who was killed in action on 21 July 1918 in France. Note the prominent white over red 8th Battalion colour patch worn on Bryant's right shoulder".
