A remembrance service and wreath laying ceremony marking the 92nd anniversary of ANZAC Day was held yesterday at the Pieta Military Cemetery, in line with a tradition which began in 1916 – ANZAC Day stands in testament to the individual sacrifice and enduring legacy forged in the Gallipoli campaign and all subsequent conflicts involving service personnel from Australia and New Zealand.

The ceremony was led by Mgr Philip Calleja, together with Fr Lawrence Zammit and Rev. Canon Tom Mendel.

Wreaths were laid by the President, Edward Fenech Adami, representatives of those countries involved in the 1915 Gallipoli campaign, including Australia, New Zealand, Britain, France, and Turkey, as well as the United States of America, the Armed Forces of Malta, the Royal British Legion, the George Cross Island Association, The King’s Own Malta Regiment Association, the Emigrants’ Commission, the Friends of Australia Association, the Maltese-Australian Association, the Maltese Australian Chamber of Commerce and Culture, and the Malta Sea Cadets.

Consecrated in both Australia and New Zealand, ANZAC Day is commemorated on the anniversary of the fateful pre-dawn landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey, on 25 April 1915.

The battle by Allied soldiers to capture and hold the Gallipoli peninsula was one of the hardest fought, but ultimately futile, campaigns of the First World War. As the troops landed on the beaches of the peninsula, they were cut down by sustained and concentrated machine-gun fire.

In the nine-month campaign that was to follow, both sides would suffer a disastrous loss of life. Of the 51,472 members of the Australian Imperial Forces – from a total Australian population of just five million – to serve at Gallipoli, 8,141 were killed during the campaign.

This heavy toll of dead and wounded carved deeply into the psyche of the people of Australia and New Zealand, and since the first anniversary of the landing, 25 April has been observed in both countries as a day of remembrance.

Recognising the association stretching back to the Gallipoli campaign between the ANZACS and Malta, the Australian High Commission has, for many years, observed ANZAC Day with a commemoration at Pieta Military Cemetery, one of five cemeteries in Malta in which ANZAC troops are buried. Shared duty brought the two nations, otherwise worlds apart, together.

There were six Maltese members of the 7th Australian Brigade which earned fame for its part in the Gallipoli landing.

History remembers Malta as the Nurse of the Mediterranean, with 57,950 of those wounded in the Dardanelles campaign, including several thousand ANZACs, evacuated to Malta for treatment. For 308 Anzacs, however, the island was to become their final resting place – there are 229 Australian and 79 New Zealand war graves in Malta.