Ms Rhondda Vanzella OAM and Mr Glenn Keys AO have joined the Council of the Australian War Memorial, filling the vacant positions previously held by Ms.
Minister for Veterans Affairs
TOMORROW the nation commemorates the 80
th anniversary of the Battle of Bardia, in Libya, the first land battle of the Second World War planned and fought predominantly by Australians.
Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Darren Chester said the effort by the 6th Australian Division in the Battle of Bardia was widely praised at the time.
“Australian soldiers, in what was then known as the 2nd Australian Imperial Force, launched a two-pronged attack against the Italian stronghold at Bardia early in the morning of 3 January 1941 – one being a diversionary assault – with British tanks in support,” Mr Chester said.
Australia to Commemorate 105th Anniversary of Gallipoli Evacuation
On Sunday, Dec. 20, Australia will commemorate 105 years since the last of its troops evacuated the Gallipoli Peninsula, the site of one of the most well-known campaigns of the First World War.
Newly reappointed Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Darren Chester said that on April 25, 1915, the ANZACs set out to seize the ridges running off the Sari Bair Range to cut off the Turks defending the Gallipoli Peninsula. The objectives were not taken and the campaign to take Turkey out of the war soon became a stalemate, and turned into an eight-month-long battle of attrition.