The pageantry and celebratory nature of today’s Anzac marches are a far cry from the gatherings of sombre recollection that characterised this day in the decades after the first world war.

That was when the veterans of Australian involvement in the botched invasion of, and later retreat from, Gallipoli, were still very much alive and those who’d died in the misadventure remained hauntingly vivid in the memories of surviving comrades in arms and the families who’d lost them.

Many veteran-survivors didn’t march – so painful were their recollections, so fervent their opposition to Australian involvement in future wars and to any opportunistic national glorification of their experiences. Others marched quietly, then drank away their afternoons and memories before returning to families who endured their pain, confining their medals to dusty recesses of cupboards for another year.

All of the Gallipoli veterans have died. Soon they will also have personally passed from living memory entirely. And yet the events that have written them into Australian foundation lore, beginning with that fatally flawed landing on an........

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