Anzac Day in New Zealand

Anzac Day, on April 25, is the anniversary of the landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli during World War I in 1915. The Australian and New Zealander soldiers were part of an Allied expedition that set out to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula. Close to 3000 New Zealand soldiers died during the eight-month Gallipoli campaign.

Anzac Day has been a public holiday in New Zealand since 1921. However, it was observed as early as 1916. A civic delegation in Wellington persuaded the government to gazette April 25 as a general half-day holiday. By 1920 it was apparent that most New Zealanders wanted Anzac Day observed as a sacred day and later that year the government introduced a bill to make Anzac Day a national holiday.
Many New Zealanders attend parades, dawn services or commemorative ceremonies on Anzac Day. The Anzac Day parades involve returned service personnel wearing their medals while marching behind banners. Defence force members, cadets and youth organizations also join in the parade.It’s also common to lay wreaths to remember New Zealanders who fought and died in past wars and conflicts. Some people travel to be part of a commemorative service at Gallipoli, in Turkey, on Anzac Day.
Services begin before dawn, as members of the defence services march to their local memorial (almost every town, large and small, in New Zealand and Australia, have a war memorial, or an "ANZAC Square") where members of the public and community leaders join them for a Dawn Service. A catafalque guard of honour around the war memorial is provided by Uniformed service personnel. The service is marked by the National Anthem, hymns, a piper, laying of ANZAC wreaths and the ANZAC Dedication which incorporates the final verse of Laurence Binyon's "For the Fallen":

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Finally, a single bugler sounds the Last Post, followed by a minute's silence, and the sounding of Reveille.
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