What American Veterans Notice First at an Australian ANZAC Dawn Service

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Master Sergeant Ray Halloran, 28 years US Army, two tours Iraq, looked down at the rising sun badge a bloke had just pinned to his lapel in the dark outside the Martin Place Cenotaph, and he said, "Wait. The kids did this? The kids organized this?" I had to explain that no, the school kids didn't organize it.

[00:00:20]They wrote it. The speeches, the ode, the wreath order. A 14-year-old from Sydney Boys High had been rehearsing the ode of remembrance since February. Ray's jaw did this thing. He turned away from me towards the catafalque party, and I watched a man who'd buried friends in Fallujah lose it completely in front of 3,000 silent Australians. That was the moment. That was item number one. But, we're not there yet. Here's the question I kept asking myself this April. Why does an American veteran, someone who's stood at Arlington, who's done the 21-gun salute, who knows ceremony, why does he come to an Australian dawn service and walk away saying it broke something open in him that 50 Memorial Days never touched? I took four of them this year. Ray in Sydney, a retired Marine Colonel named Diane Petrowski in Canberra, two Vietnam vets, Hank and Bill, brothers from Ohio, to a tiny service in Yungaburra, North Queensland, population 1,100.

[00:01:22]10 things. 10 things they noticed before sunrise that made them go quiet. We're counting down from 10 to one. Item 10 starts with a number zero. Zero police barricades. Zero metal detectors. 3,000 people in the dark in the middle of Sydney CBD, and the security presence was four blokes in RSL blazers directing parking. But, the one that actually broke Diane wasn't until number two.

[00:01:49]You'll see why the comments couldn't stop arguing about it. Half of you reckon it should have been number one, and honestly, after editing this, I'm not sure you're wrong. Item 10, the thing that's missing. Hank, the older Ohio brother, leans over to me at 4:15 a.m. and goes, "Where's the perimeter?"

[00:02:08]I said, "Mate, what perimeter?" He said, "The security perimeter, the bag check, the bollards." I pointed at Constable Sharon Watley, single police officer drinking a thermos coffee, chatting to an 84-year-old in a Korea veterans cap.

[00:02:25]The Australian Federal Police published the threat assessment for Anzac Day 2026 at probable, same level as a Bunnings sausage sizzle. Compare that to America's Memorial Day at Arlington, 1,400 federal officers, vehicle screening 800 m out, snipers on the roof of the Women in Military Service Memorial. Hank just kept shaking his head. "We can't have nice things anymore. You blokes still can, but that's nothing compared to number nine.

[00:02:54]Item nine, the silence." Ray timed it.

[00:02:57]He literally pulled out his Garmin watch.

[00:03:00]3,000 people, and from 4:42 to 4:58, 16 minutes, not one phone rang, not one child cried, not one selfie click. Ray showed me his watch reading, ambient noise registered 31 decibels. That's a library at midnight. Diane said something I wrote down. "At Arlington, people clap. They clap during the wreath laying. They clap when the president walks out. Here, 3,000 people just don't. They know. The Returned & Services League doesn't enforce silence.

[00:03:33]There's no announcement. It's 111 years of inherited muscle memory since 1916, when the first Anzac service was held in Albany, Western Australia, the morning the troopship sailed. But that's nothing compared to number eight. Item eight, who's running the show. Bill, the younger Ohio brother, looked at the program at Yungaburra and said, "Hold on. The MC is 15."

[00:03:56]I said, "Mate, the wreath is being laid by the year six captain. The bugler is 16. The ode is being read by year nine girl whose great-grandfather died at Tobruk." Australian schools mandate Anzac commemoration as part of a national curriculum. Year three through year 10. The Department of Education calls it civic continuity. Bill called it something else. He called it the thing we lost in 1973.

[00:04:23]And we're getting closer to number two, the one that broke Diane. But first, number seven.

[00:04:29]Item seven, the last post. In America, taps at a military funeral is increasingly played by what the Pentagon calls a ceremonial bugle. It's a digital recording inside horn. The Department of Defense ran out of buglers in 2003. They have 1,800 active bugler slots and fill maybe 500. In Australia, every single dawn service last post, every single one, in 4,000 locations across the country, is played live. By a human.

[00:05:00]Usually for free. Ray was told by the Currumbin RSL that their bugler, a 19-year-old apprentice electrician named Jack Morrison, had driven down from Bow Desert at 2:00 a.m. and refused the $50 they offered him.

[00:05:14]Ray said, very quietly, "We pay $400 a service and still get a recording." This is where I want to read a comment from last month's video. Kookaburra99 08 Road. Yemmo, my preemie son was 11 weeks early. ICU for 94 days. The bill would have been over $300,000 in States.

[00:05:35]Medicare, zero. Same country that hands you a free bugler and a free cenotaph.

[00:05:41]We don't notice anymore. Thanks for making us notice. Mate, that comment hit me. We'll come back to that thread, but that's nothing compared to number six.

[00:05:50]Item six, the gunfire breakfast. By 6:30 a.m., Ray's sitting in the Petersham RSL eating bacon and eggs that cost him $8.

[00:05:59]$8.

[00:06:01]A bloke named Stewart, 78, ex-Royal Australian Navy, pours a measure of dark rum into Ray's coffee without asking.

[00:06:09]"Gunfire," he says. Tradition, since 1923.

[00:06:14]Returned and Services League runs 1,150 sub-branches across Australia. Every single one opens at dawn on the 25th.

[00:06:24]The breakfast is subsidized. The difference is covered by club gaming revenue, which under New South Wales law must return a percentage to community programs. It's a closed loop. Pokies fund the rum that funds the memory. Ray asked Stewart what he did in the Navy.

[00:06:40]Stewart said, "I'd rather not." Ray nodded. They drank in silence for 10 minutes. And we're getting closer to number two. Item five, the wreath from Turkey. At every major dawn service, Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Gallipoli itself, there's a wreath laid by the Turkish ambassador.

[00:07:00]Diane saw it at the Australian War Memorial and stopped walking. I told her about Ataturk's letter.

[00:07:06]1934.

[00:07:07]The founder of modern Turkey wrote to the mothers of the Australian and New Zealand boys his army had killed at Gallipoli. And he said, and this is carved in stone at the AWM, "Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace after having lost their lives on this land. They've become our sons as well."

[00:07:26]Diane is a Marine colonel. She said, "We can't even share a wreath with Canada without it becoming a political fight."

[00:07:34]Australia has commemorated alongside its former enemy for 92 years, uninterrupted. Through wars, through coups, through everything. But that's nothing compared to number four. Item four. And this is where I need to stop.

[00:07:49]Now, some of you in the comments, and you're right, pointed out that last time I covered Anzac Day, I didn't mention the indigenous diggers properly.

[00:07:57]Capricorn Coast Vet 2014 wrote, "Mate, you can't talk about Anzac and skip the frontier wars context. It's the whole story or it's not the story." Fair call.

[00:08:07]I heard you. So, at the Redfern Anzac service this year, I stood next to a Gamilaraay man named Uncle Reg Cutmore, whose grandfather served in the 11th Light Horse at Beersheba in 1917, and who couldn't vote when he came home.

[00:08:22]Wasn't counted in the census until 1967.

[00:08:26]There are now 64 dedicated indigenous Anzac services across Australia. The Coloured Diggers March in Redfern started in 2007 and now draws 8,000 people. The Australian War Memorial added the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Service Gallery in 2019. Ray, who served alongside Navajo code talker descendants, said, "You've got the harder version of our story, and you're telling it earlier than we did." But that's nothing compared to number three.

[00:08:56]Item three, the poppies. The Australian War Memorial has a wall. 102,000 names.

[00:09:03]Every Australian killed in service since 1885. At dawn, each name gets a poppy.

[00:09:10]Not stamped, not printed, placed by hand, by a volunteer, often a descendant.

[00:09:16]Hank found his great uncle's name. Wait, let me back up. Hank's great uncle, Corporal Lawrence Halloran, was an American who enlisted with the AIF in 1916 because the US hadn't entered the war yet. Died at Pozières. Buried in France. Hank didn't know any of this until a memorial volunteer named Margaret, aged 71, looked up Halloran on the database in 90 seconds and walked him to panel 47. She placed a poppy on Lawrence that morning. She didn't know who he was. She just placed it because that's what you do.

[00:09:50]Hank, 74 years old, retired structural engineer, two tours in Vietnam, sat down on the cold marble and cannot get back up for 11 minutes.

[00:10:01]Quick comment from Brisbane Boilermaker 67 last week. Yemo, my old man was AIF.

[00:10:06]Came home, never spoke a word about it, died 1991. My daughter found his name on the roll of honor 2 years ago. The memorial sent her a printed certificate and a photo of the poppy placement. No charge. Try getting that out of the VA.

[00:10:22]Mate, yeah, and we're one step away from number two. Here's where I need you to stay with me because number two is the one Diane couldn't get past. The one that made a Marine Colonel walk 20 m away from the crowd so nobody would see her face. Item two, the lone piper.

[00:10:39]At the Australian War Memorial, after the last post, after the minute silence, after the reveille, a single piper walks out alone. No introduction. No announcement. Plays Flowers of the Forest on the Mount Ainslie ridge above the building. 200 m up. Silhouette against the rising sun.

[00:10:58]Diane said, and I'm reading from my notes, we don't have this. We don't have the geography for this. We don't have the permission for this. Someone would file a noise complaint. Someone would demand a permit. Someone would want the piper miked up for the live stream sponsor.

[00:11:14]The piper is unpaid. The hill is public land.

[00:11:17]The tune is 500 years old, written for the Scottish dead at Flodden in 1513.

[00:11:23]The Australian Capital Territory government doesn't charge a fee, doesn't require a permit, doesn't sell the broadcast rights. It just happens Because someone agreed it should in 1985 and nobody since has had the bad taste to monetize it. That's when Diane walked away from the crowd. Maureen Colquhoun.

[00:11:43]31 years of service. Couldn't be seen.

[00:11:46]Item one, the kids run it. Not the kids help. Not the kids participate. The kids run it. The year nine girl reading the ode at Martin Place this year was Eliza Carmichael. Her great great grandfather, private Thomas Carmichael, third battalion AIF, died at Lone Pine on August 7th, 1915. She has read his last letter aloud at her school service every year since year four. Australia legislated commemorative continuity into the school system in 1995. The Anzac Day commemoration schools framework. Every public school in the country, year three through year 10. Not optional. Not if there's time. Mandated. Compare that to the United States, where 14 states have removed civics as a graduation requirement since 2010, and where a 2024 Annenberg survey found that 27% of Americans cannot name a single branch of their own military. Eliza is 14. She knew the date her great great grandfather died. She knew his battalion number. She knew the name of the officer who wrote the condolence letter. She knew because her grandmother knew, because her great grandmother knew, because Australia quietly, deliberately, without fanfare built a system where a 14-year-old girl in 2026 still carries a name from 1915 forward in a 2090. Ray, standing next to me in the dark, said, "We had this.

[00:13:18]We had this in 1955.

[00:13:20]We let it go. You blokes never did."

[00:13:22]That's when the Rising Sun badge on his lapel caught the first light of dawn.

[00:13:27]Now, most of you in the comments have been telling me about something else.

[00:13:30]You've been telling me about the funerals, about what happens when an Australian veteran dies, the RSL turning up unannounced, the catafalque party at a country cemetery for a 96-year-old bloke nobody outside his town had heard of, the slouch hat on the coffin.

[00:13:46]Northern Rivers Nan 47 sent me three paragraphs about her father's service in Korea and the RSL funeral that followed.

[00:13:54]Sunshine Coast Sparky said his old man got a piper at the graveside that the family didn't pay for and didn't request. That's the video I'm making next. What happens when an Australian veteran dies? And why an American funeral director who's done 3,000 services said the Australian version made him want to retire and start over.

[00:14:15]If you got a story about an RSL funeral, a last post at country cemetery, or a slouch hat that traveled three states to make it onto a coffin, drop it below. I read everyone. The kids still run the dawn service. The piper still plays for free. The names still get poppies placed by hand, quietly, deliberately, since 1916. You already knew this.

[00:14:39]Now you got the numbers.