Whangarei Girls' High School student Rachel Boyd was at Gallipoli last week to take part in the Anzac Day commemorations there, her prize as the national winner of the ANZ RSA Cyril Bassett VC speech competition.
Three days before the commemorations she wrote the following, under the title 'Tears for
our soldiers.'
Today we walked the very route our soldiers did 98 years ago, up to Chanuk Bair. I cried for men that I never knew, knelt at the graves of those men, merely boys of 17, and was filled with sorrow thinking that they were the same age as I, and had their lives taken so soon.
I stood on the beach of Anzac Cove and gazed over the dozens of memorial graves of those brave men that were caught short on that beach.
Once again we are reminded of how lovely the Turkish people are. When looking at some memorial monuments Mum was tapped on the shoulder by some Turkish women. Speaking not a trace of English, and Mum not an inkling of Turkish, they simply gestured to the tears on their cheeks and took her hands, and without spoken language they mourned together.
