Tawa College student Conor Donahue (front) and Auckland sea cadet Olivia Stacey, both 17, lay a poppy on the grave of 17-year-old Private Martin Persson at Chunuk Bair, Gallipoli on Anzac Day. They were among the students at Gallipoli as part of the New Zealand contingent for the Anzac commemoration after winning places in the Prime Minister’s competition. Persson, a member of the Wellington Infantry Battalion, was killed in action
during his battalion’s epic stand on Chunuk Bair on August 8, 1915. He is one of the few battalion men killed that day to have
a named grave. Most are commemorated on the Memorial to the Missing above the cemetery. – Photo: Ian McGibbon

OTAKI - Malayan Emergency veteran Harry Halsall and his grand-daughters, Clare Halsall (TS Tutira) and Able Chef Samantha Halsall (currently serving on HMNZS Te Mana, at Devonport) were among the large crowd who braved the drizzle and threat of heavier rain at the Otaki dawn service. Many families with small children were there. Kapiti mayor Jenny Rowan spoke, the firing party came from 1 NZ Signals Regiment, Linton Camp, and a wreath was brought to the Cenotaph by Phyllis Miles, one of the Otaki RSA vice-presidents, and Norma Cooksley, president of the Otaki RSA Women’s Section. - Photo: Howard (Clas) Chamberlain

HERVEY BAY – Grant Holms, 99, a retired school principal from Auckland, and his son John Holms, a former Naval Volunteer Reservist and teacher from Auckland now living in Hervey Bay, pay their respects at the Hervey Bay Cenotaph in Queensland, Australia. The oldest World War 2 veteran in the Wide Bay area, Grant laid a wreath in memory of the First and Second Echelons of the 2NZEF. He was in the First Echelon Divisional Signals, while his two brothers, Bob and Ian Holms, joined the Second Echelon. Pte Ian Holms was one of the first New Zealand casualties of World War 2, killed in action in October 1940 while serving with the 22nd Battalion. Bob Holms, who died in 2004, was life patron of the Napier RSA and very involved in RSA well-being at a national level.

PORT VILA – Eight former members of the Royal New Zealand Navy writers’ branch joined a large crowd at the dawn service in Vanuatu. Brent Bramley, Hanz Christian, David Coronno, Lionel Loza, Stewart Scarlett, Terry Short, Trevor Smith and Graeme Wattam – who were in town for a writers’ reunion – met Vanuatu president Iolu Johnson Abbil Kaniapnin and the New Zealand high commissioner, Jeff Langley. Photo: Graeme Wattam.

CHRISTCHURCH - Veterans of the 19th Infantry & Armoured Regiment Association’s South Island branch at their Anzac Day parade and commemoration in Victoria Park, Christchurch. The unit was formed on October 31, 1939 and sailed for Egypt in January 1940, serving in the Middle East and Central Mediterranean for the rest of World War 2. The South Island branch was formed in 1946, the same year the unit demobilised.

The concept of a living memorial became possible when the Christchurch City Council offered an area overlooking the city from Victoria Park on the Port Hills. A large rock of Hanmer pink marble inlaid with a plaque of Italian black granite was erected in memory of those who had died. Four plots of 19 trees, each native to the countries where the unit served, surround the stone. The memorial was dedicated in 1953.

A roadside forecourt with stone seat and plaque was built in 1978, and more seating followed. In 1995 a plane table was completed with a bronze plaque outlining the unit’s history and explaining the meaning of the memorial park layout. A large picnic table was unveiled when responsibility for the memorial was handed back to the council in 2000. Surviving 19th members and their appointed representatives (guardians) retain a shared interest in maintaining and supporting the park, and they commemorate Anzac Day there each year.

BECKLINGEN – Hans-Heinrich Meyer (left), Pastor Bernd Brauer and Rev Peter Heneghan commemorate Anzac Day at the Becklingen cemetery, near Hannover, Germany, where 38 New Zealand airmen are buried. Since 2007 Meyer has organised an Anzac Day service at the cemetery to honour the airmen. Meyer – who works for the German War Graves Commission, looking after graves and trying to find missing German soldiers in Eastern Europe and Russia – has made several visits to New Zealand and has met some of the families of the New Zealand airmen buried at Becklingen. (See story, RSA Review, summer 2009).

ARBROATH – It could be almost any town in New Zealand with the pipe band leading an Anzac Day parade to the cemetery or war memorial. Instead, it’s Arbroath – on the east coast, a little north of Dundee, in Scotland – where Kiwis were remembered on Anzac Day.

NEWCASTLE ON TYNE – The Newcastle on Tyne Branch of the RAF Association held an Anzac Day parade and wreath-laying ceremony at the Chevington cemetery in Northumberland, England to honour 10 Anzac servicemen buried there, reports branch chairman Sydney Graham. Wing Commander R Boundy represented the RAF and a guard of honour was provided by the Air Training Corps