Sunday Telegraph readers share their precious Anzac Day photos

The Sunday Telegraph today published a special 24-page liftout honouring our Anzac legends. The Heroes Next Door special edition shows our gratitude to a group of people who understood duty, defined bravery and loved their country. SEE THE PICTURES

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Being a reporter since I left high school, Anzac Days were generally spent chatting to Diggers.

It began at 5am at the dawn service, to the main march through whatever city centre I had to be working in at the time, to watching the ex-soldiers and their families play two-up at the RSL Club all afternoon.

It was one of the better assignments, especially for someone who grew up in a family in which Anzac Day ranked just below Christmas and a little above birthdays in the scale of special family days that weren’t to be missed.

There were no excuses.

The Sunday Telegraph’s Anzac 2020 special edition.

Attendance was obligatory and tears were inevitable.

And, if, on the off chance I was genuinely ill, my Nan would telephone and check I was watching the ABC’s wall-to-wall coverage of the Sydney Anzac Parade right through to the cenotaph ceremony and bugle call.

Thankfully, in the interests of family harmony, I almost always was.

Among my favourite Anzac memories came in the late 80s when we would crowd onto the roof of the Northern Daily Leader newspaper office in Tamworth for the best vantage point in the city to watch the march snake its way down the highway, around the corner into Brisbane St and on down to the memorial in the park.

At the front of the parade proudly marched Lyall Green, a local historian and former school teacher who served in New Guinea in World War II and would later join the Occupation Forces in Japan at the end of the war.

Mr Green was a bit unsteady on the callipers he wore most of his life but his presence in the long march through the city served as a reminder of what Anzac Days meant to communities all over Australia who lost so much in theatres of war.

This year was a little different to most.

The coronavirus pandemic made it impossible for people to publicly pay their dues to those who sacrificed everything for their country, their families and the cities and towns they called home.

The sense of disappointment is exacerbated by the knowledge that the people who are most at risk in this health crisis are also among the generations Anzac Day was established to honour.

And that is what this liftout, The Heroes Next Door, is all about.

It’s an unashamed, wholehearted expression of admiration and gratitude to a group of people who understood duty, defined bravery and loved their country.

We were overwhelmed by the response to our request for the precious photos from your personal albums.

Peter Louis shared this photo of his uncle Angus Ferguson and father Doug Bond and an unnamed soldier who served in the 6th and 7thh Divisions and only met this once in Syria.

Cheryl Lopresti and Janet Saxberg shared this photograph of their grandfather Charles Leonard McDonald who was part of the Light Horse Brigade during World War 1.

Hundreds and hundreds of emails containing some of the most beautiful images of war we have ever seen lobbed into our email inbox — two or three every few minutes.

Some had supporting documents, others included letters from the war or updated photos of the Diggers, nurses, medics and other ex-servicemen and women later in life.

Some were sent by husbands and wives, sons and daughters, grandchildren and others by friends and neighbours.

Margaret Hough shared his photograph of her father William (Billy) Mangold with fellow 3rd Battalion RAR troops at Kure, Japan in 1953.

Michael Ryan being cheeky in New Guinea while in the Air Force. This photograph was shared by Rosalyn Tuzzolino.

All of the contributions were written with an overwhelming sense of pride and we are humbled that you trusted us with your most loved memories.

We received so many and we tried to include as many as we could and we apologise to anyone who may have missed out. But we will publish all photographs left over in our Favourite Photos section that appears every week in the Sunday Tele.

Flicking through this special edition may not completely satisfy your need to let all servicemen and women past and present know that we appreciate what they did and continue to do, but we love it, and we hope you do too.

Pick up today’s The Sunday Telegraph for its 24-page Anzac Day 2020 special edition.

Originally published as Sunday Telegraph readers share their precious Anzac Day photos