Anzac Day, Iraqi style

By CPL Damien Shovell

Australian personnel based in Baghdad managed to find time for a game of two-up on Anzac Day.

Photo: LCPL Neil Ruskin

Anzac Day in Iraq saw Australian sailors, soldiers and airmen and women gather to pause and pay tribute at services around the country.

At the dawn service at the Air Traffic Control detachment, Prime Minister John Howard and CDF General Peter Cosgrove made their now well-known surprise visit, landing in the hour before dawn on a RAAF Hercules at Baghdad International Airport.

As Chaplain Ivan Grant, Principal Chaplain at the Australian National Headquarters in Baghdad read the order of service at the ATC detachment dawn service, a series of images depicting the ADF in conflict throughout the years projected onto a screen behind him.

“We have an amazing heritage to draw from, and it is only now, serving here in Baghdad that I am beginning to understand it, because it is here where new chapters are being written,” he said.

“In Anzac Days to come we who serve here will proudly take our place alongside the veterans of our past, and in a new way we will understand why they served and why they march.”

As GEN Peter Cosgrove approached the lectern to read the prayer for the ADF, automatic gunfire was heard from the US training range nearby, adding a poignant reminder of the dangers faced both here in Iraq, and on the beaches of Gallipoli 89 years earlier.

Prime Minister Howard was joined by representatives from the UK, US, Hungary and Turkey in laying commemorative wreaths, as did Minister Mal Brough, GEN Peter Cosgrove and Commodore Campbell Darby along with Mr Neil Mules, Head Of Mission at the Australian Representative Office.

At the gunfire breakfast the Prime Minister mingled freely amongst those in attendance and posed for numerous photo shoots and signature signings before visiting Aussie Island at Camp Victory for morning tea where he announced the approval of a campaign medal for service in Afghanistan and Iraq.

ADF personnel held smaller dawn services in various locations throughout the MEAO including the SECDET, the US Anaconda Air Base, onboard HMAS Stuart, in Um Qsar, and in Kuwait and Afghanistan.

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