Across globe, tributes for fallen Australian New Zealand soldiers since World War I

Anzac Day Dawn Service at Kings Park, Western Australia, 25 April 2009, 94th anniversary. (Wikipedia photo)

BRUSSELS, Belgium – Australians and New Zealanders united from drenched Sydney to the World War I battlefields in Europe to honour their war dead on ANZAC Day, one year ahead of the centenary of their emblematic campaign in Gallipoli.

Thousands of visitors travelled to Turkey for Friday’s solemn ceremony on the Gallipoli peninsula where the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed on 25 April, 1915 for an unsuccessful and bloody eight-month campaign.

At the other side of the European front line, Australian and New Zealand families gathered for similar ceremonies in Ypres, where thousands of their ancestors fell during fierce battles along the Western front and in Flanders fields.

Major ceremonies were also held in France and Britain.