Emotionally-charged dawn services

A record crowd of 13,000 people attended dawn services in Tauranga. Photo / George Novak

Never did the humble red poppy resonate more vividly than at Saturday's Gallipoli centenary Anzac Day dawn services at Mount Maunganui and Greerton.

Record crowds of 13,000 people made the pilgrimage to the cenotaphs on Marine Parade and the Tauranga RSA's clubrooms on Cameron Rd.

Pre-dawn main roads leading to each service streamed with traffic, leaving no one in any doubt that something special was going down.

And that is how it turned out. Huge crowds lent a special resonance to the ever-popular services, with numbers so large at the Mount there were reports of people giving up trying to reach the cenotaph in their cars and heading for Greerton instead.

Every nook and cranny was packed at the Tauranga RSA's service. About 3000 people crammed the carpark and surrounding areas to get a view across a sea of heads.

Even the march, led by veterans and followed by defence force personnel and uniformed youth groups, had difficulty squeezing into their allocated space and trailed off in the direction they had come.

"It was a spectacular turnout, twice as many as we would normally get," said Tauranga RSA's secretary manager Graham Howard.

Happily, the sheer size of the crowd sprinkled with children did nothing to detract from the occasion. The emotional-laden atmosphere of the minute's silence after the bugler played The Last Post was so quiet the air could have been cut by a knife.

Dramatic effect was increased by candles flickering among the crowd, with the emerging dawn evoked perfectly by RSA vice-president Heather Baldwin, who said, "As this dawn is even now about to pierce the night, so let their memory inspire us to work for the coming of the new light into dark places of the world."

The recital of The Ode and playing of The Last Post by bugler Peter Cranson following the wreath laying saw the emotional tension reach a climax, relieved a heart-rending minute later by the playing of the reveille and the raising of the lowered flag.

Naval Commander John Butcher of Matua then gave the NZ Defence Force's Anzac Day address, saying how 100 years ago New Zealand and Australian soldiers went into their first joint military action, a campaign that introduced the name Gallipoli and the word Anzac into the lexicon of both nations.

"We remember the dead, but we also remember the living, those veterans who return from military deployments, often carrying, unseen, the mental scars and trauma of what they have experienced."

A poem composed by Tauranga Girls' College Year 13 student Annie Connor captured the mood of Tauranga RSA's Anzac Day service. Read by Tauranga Girls' College head girl Ana Morris, it was titled "And Still the Poppies Grow"

Up, over the trench,

the men that we lost

poison the Earth.

And still the poppies grow.

The murderous air

wrenches the heart,

of too many souls.

And still the poppies grow.

In the art of defiance,

the irony we face,

to believe in a silver lining.

But still the poppies grow.