Ever since 1934 a memorial ceremony has been held at dawn on April 25th to commemorate the service of the Australian and New Zealand soldiers in the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey. You can read about this in an earlier post by clicking here.

Due to COVID-19 Pandemic, on March 17th the governments of Turkey, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand agreed to cancel this year’s activities. Since it is only appropriate to observe ANZAC Day on ANZAC Day, there will be no observance at Gallipoli in 2020. You can read more about this from a British perspective here and from a Turkish perspective here.

Australia will conduct a dawn memorial ceremony at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra which won’t be open to the public. You can learn how to watch this event here. Do bear in mind that it will start at 2:00 PM Central Time on Friday April 24th as Australia is 16 hours ahead of Kansas.

James (“Jim”) Patton BS BA MPA is a retired state official from Shawnee, Kansas and a frequent contributor to several WW1 e-publications, including "Roads to the Great War," "St. Mihiel Tripwire," "Over the Top" and "Medicine in the First World War." He has spent many hours walking the WW1 battlefields, and is also an authority on British regiments and a collector of their badges. An Army Engineer during the Vietnam War, he does work for the US World War 1 Centennial Commission and is affiliated with the WW1 Historical Association, the Western Front Association, the Salonika Campaign Society and the Gallipoli Association.