New Zealand recognises the soldiers that died at Gallipoli as Anzac Day (Australia, New Zealand Army Corps) is celebrated around the country. It commemorates the terrible slaughter that occurred at Gallipoli, Turkey during World War I. Both sides of the war suffered tremendous loss with totals approaching 500,000 casualties of which 112,000 died or about 20%. The Kiwi's suffered over 33% killed which was tremendous. There was a Mel Gibson movie about the battle which actually lasted nearly a year seeing 6 allied battleships lost on one day followed by the ground war.
Around New Zealand and Australia, the morning of April 25th at about 5:30am the remembrance begins. We of course had to attend. It began with a 105 howitzer going off and then speeches, bands, etc.
We went inside the memorial that is located in front of the Parliament building
Later in the morning we went up to Karori (a suburb of Wellington) and visited the Wright's Hill Fortress, a WWII coastal battery built to protect Wellington City from invasion by the Japanese. This was a system of tunnels and rooms that connected 3 large gun emplacements that were never fired at the enemy. We'll show the pictures without comment unless necessary!
We wrapped up the day by attending the "We'll Meet Again" ANZAC concert that included music from the WWII period.
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