Commemorations honoring New Zealand and Australia’s war dead were marred yesterday when a military helicopter heading to a memorial service in Wellington crashed, killing three people.
The Defence Force said the helicopter was part of a formation heading to Wellington to take part in a flyby for ANZAC Day — the most important day of remembrance for Australia and New Zealand — when it crashed into rugged hill country just before dawn.
Across the two countries, tens of thousands turned out for annual dawn services marking the anniversary of the ill-fated landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) at Gallipoli in Turkey in World War I.
PHOTO: EPA
“I have received news that three members of the Royal New Zealand Airforce have lost their lives in a helicopter crash and that a fourth is seriously injured,” New Zealand Prime Minister John Key told the service in Gallipoli.
“Their helicopter went down as it was traveling to take part in the commemorations for their fellow servicemen and women,” he told the thousands gathered to remember the bloody campaign.
“This tragedy is a stark reminder that our personnel still face great risks today as they serve their country,” he said.
More than 10,000 New Zealand and Australian servicemen died in the failed eight-month campaign in Gallipoli, and ANZAC Day has become a symbol of their bravery and a defining period in the two countries’ culture and shared development.
In Wellington, where an estimated 3,000 attended the ANZAC ceremony, army chief Major General Rhys Jones said the day was not a celebration.
“ANZAC Day is a time to remember and reflect on the sorrow, loss and sacrifice that is the obligation of nationhood, the cost of liberty and the price of freedom,” he said.
Australians marked ANZAC day at home, in cities around the world, and on the WWI battlefield of Villers-Bretonneux in France.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said ANZAC Day had shaped the nation’s memory.
“It shapes deeply how we see the world, 100 years later it shapes still what we do in the world,” he told thousands at a Canberra service.
Rudd said the carnage of WWI — in which 60,000 Australian soldiers died — meant that Australia would no longer “leave ourselves to become mere cannon fodder for foreign generals.”
“If fight we must then all speed to the action, but as a nation we strain every sinew for peace because there is no romance in the mud and blood of a war,” he said.
Australian Trooper Mark Donaldson, who recently received the Victoria Cross for his efforts in Afghanistan, said the ANZAC tradition remained strong despite the loss of veterans from WWI and WWII.
“I think it is growing and growing in strength … I don’t think it has lost meaning at all,” he told reporters in Sydney.
“We need to continue that tradition and it needs to be the young people that understand the spirit of the ANZAC and for us to be able to continue on and remember those guys that have been before us,” he said.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
RSS