They landed on this day in a land “ancient and implacable”.
They were young and raw.
Few were professionals, most new to battle.
They were called the Australian Imperial Force.
But before these 240 days of hell were over, they owned a name among the immortals - the Anzacs.
Unlike their French and British comrades, who held aloft battle honours like Austerlitz and Waterloo, the Anzacs had no tradition to rely on or defend.
They did something greater - they created one.
A new story for a new nation.
It is the story of us all and it belongs to us all because they were men of every background and belief.
But in this they were united - they were volunteers, every single one.
And so their presence here in Turkey was not only a manifestation of duty but an expression of citizenship.
Free citizens from a free land.
That is why Charles Bean was moved to say that “it was on the 25th of April, 1915, that the consciousness of Australian nationhood was born.”
Here, on these shores.
So rocky, so harsh - and so very far from home.
Our federal bond was young when the Anzacs came to this place.
The laws and institutions of our nation were laid down in 1901.
But here, in 1915, its spirit and ethos were sealed.
This was our first act of nationhood in the eyes of a watching world, an act authored not by statesmen or diplomats, but by simple soldiers.
The Anzacs.
The boys of Federation who became the men of Gallipoli.
This campaign claimed 8700 Australian lives.
From the most senior - Sir William Bridges - our first general to be killed in war to the youngest, James Martin who died at just 14, waiting to receive a letter from his mother that never came.
Almost one in ten of all Australia's losses in wartime occurred in the narrow confines of this peninsula.
And no portion of this landscape was fought more fiercely than Lone Pine.
Three days of vicious fighting soaked this ground in blood.
Of the nine VCs awarded at Gallipoli, seven were won here.
Like the campaign as a whole, it was a story of occasional success but ultimate frustration.
So today we come here not in triumph.
We come here in honour of qualities that defined the Anzacs and, we hope however faintly, might also define ourselves:
Reckless daring under fire.
Larrikin good humour.
A genius for improvisation.
And the unbroken bond of mateship.
Qualities that a swift victory might not have so easily revealed.
But qualities tempered and disclosed over nine months spent in the mud and filth of these treacherous gullies and unyielding cliffs.
Victory was not gained here, but meaning was won in this place and a harsh learning.
From here, the Anzacs went to the Western Front and Palestine where they found triumph.
And it is over this entire continuum from Anzac Day 1915 to Armistice Day 1918 upon which, in the final analysis, our judgement must be made.
That is the tradition of arms that gave us Tobruk and Kokoda, Kapyong and Long Tan.
And that is the tradition of arms passed down unbroken over a century to more recent conflicts, as the presence of Ben Roberts-Smith so powerfully attests today.
Victory was unlikely on these shores; a test the Anzacs were never going to pass.
They passed a greater and more enduring test.
So when Lieutenant Noel McShane of the AIF's 1stBattalion, asked of posterity:
“I hope you in Australia are not ashamed of us; we have done our bit and no blame can fall on us”, our answer rings unanimous down the decades.
No.
No, we are not ashamed of you.
Because no shame can exist in this place.
We are proud.
We are thankful.
And we will never, ever forget.