Australians remember WWI war heroes who fought in France

Some 3,000 Australians gathered to mark Anzac Day on Monday with a dawn service in northern France to honour their forebears who fought in the Battle of the Somme a century ago. The faces of the fallen were projected onto the imposing tower of the Australian National Memorial, which honours nearly 11,000 soldiers with no known graves.

People attend a dawn service to mark the 98th Anzac commemoration ceremony at the Australian National Memorial in Villers-Bretonneux Reuters/Benoit Tessier

Dignitaries including French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and the governor general of Australia, Sir Peter John Cosgrove, laid wreaths at the monument of the cemetery at Villers-Bretonneux.

The Battle of the Somme, which lasted nearly five months, saw more than a million casualties on both the Allied and German sides and came to symbolise the futility of World War I.

Corporal Daniel Keighran, 32, from Nambour in the northern Australian state of Queensland was to read the Ode of Remembrance at the dawn service: "They went with songs to the battle, they were young. Straight of limb, true of eye… they fell with their faces to the foe…"

Keighran was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration for valour, for his bravery in drawing enemy fire in a 2010 battle in Afghanistan to save an injured comrade.

The Australian and New Zealand Army Corp (Anzac) are remembered for their part in the battle of Gallipoli, in modern-day Turkey, which begun on 25 April 1915, the start of a failed eight-month campaign against the Ottoman Empire in which 8,700 Australians and nearly 2,800 New Zealanders died.

Now synonymous with valour, Anzac Day is a public holiday in both Australia and New Zealand, also honouring veterans from other conflicts, including South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Iraq.

Meanwhile, France marked Anzac Day by announcing plans for a memorial in Wellington to commemorate its wartime bond with New Zealand.

"France places great value on the significance of this memorial to celebrate the relationship between our two countries, the enduring friendship that unites us and the common memories we share, of which the First World War was a major example," the French ambassador Florence Jeanblanc-Risler said.