ANZAC DAY For the Fallen

 Posted 04/22/2006  8:15 pm

For those of you, like myself who have lost loved ones in the Military

May I take a moment to put in writing what many of each of you will hear Tuedsay morning.

since this Anzac day falls on a Tuesday, The Australian Kiwi Club of South Florida had our service this Saturday arvo- eve.

So for you who still care

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.

the fourth stanza of the poem "For the Fallen" by Laurence Binyon. It was first published in the Times (London) in 1914 and later in many anthologies of war verse. Its use on Anzac Day may have originated with the Queensland Anzac Day Commemoration Committee, which placed it on the cover of a collection of sermons and addresses for Anzac Day published in 1921. It was also used at the laying of the Inauguration Stone of the Australian War Memorial in 1929. In Flanders fields by the Canadian officer J.M. McCrae is another popular recitation. McCrae was a professor of medicine at McGill University before the war. A gunner in the Boer War, he served as medical officer with the first Canadian contingent in WW1 and wrote this poem at the second battle of Ypres in 1915. It was published anonymously in Punch. The writer was wounded in May 1918 and died three days later.