On 25 April 1915, the ANZAC force landed at Gallipoli and met fierce resistance in what became a protracted 8-month campaign, with over 10,000 casualties on the Australian and New Zealand side.
Australia had only been a Federal Commonwealth for 13 years. The experience burned itself into Australian consciousness, and the date has been commemorated ever since.
My own paternal grandfather, Howard Gunningham, fought with the Essex Yeomanry at Ypres, and was badly wounded on 13th May 1915 (a few weeks after the Gallipoli landings). We still have the old penny coin that saved his leg - it was in his pocket at the time and shrapnel blew half it away. He struggled to safety on his arms through miles of thick mud and was invalided out of the Army.
My maternal grandfather, Charles "Pop" Harris, whom I was named after, was part of the last ever British cavalry charge (at Cumbrai) in 1917. He used to describe how some comrades fell off their horses and at the time he wondered why they were falling. Later he realised they'd been shot, in the heat of the moment it hadn't occurred to him.
Although both my grandads have since passed on (Howard lived to 87 years, Pop to 6 days short of his 100th birthday), their stories have stayed with me, as crisp as when they told them to me when I was a boy. My generation has not had a conscription war, perhaps partly due to my Dad's and grandfathers' generations. I remember them, and millions of others who gave service in times of war, some of whom did not come back (the same, or at all).
What does ANZAC Day mean to you?