AS THE nation stops to commemorate those who served and gave their lives in war, New England has a special reason to reflect.
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The region surrendered the single largest body of volunteers from a country centre to fight in World War I.
These were known as the Armidale Kurrajongs, after the evergreen trees that grew across New England.
One hundred and eight years later, on Thursday, April 25, the Kurrajongs will be remembered in Anzac Day services in Walcha, Uralla and Armidale, along with other dawn services across the district.
Since the Kurrajongs fought in World War I, Australians have served in 12 wars, including in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan and in peacekeeping missions in countries such as Operation Anode in the Solomons and Operation Astute in Timor.
Yet it is this group of 114 men from Inverell, who left their homes, friends and family to fight in France 108 years ago, that captures the spirit of the Anzac legend.
Most of the Kurrajongs ended up in the 33 Battalion, also known as New England's Own.
They fought at the battle of Messines and through to the battle of Villers-Bretonneux in April 1918, where the advancing tide of the German counter-offensive was halted.
Their journey to the European battlefields began on a sunny day on January 12, 1916, when 114 men left Inverell to fight in the war. They were joined by men from Moree, who had embarked on a similar march to enlist in the 33rd Battalion Australian Imperial Force.
Within a year, many would lay dead on the fields of Flanders.
The Kurrajong March, as it was known, was a recruitment campaign that saw a train wend its way from Inverell to Narrabri, picking up 150 eager young men along the way.
Their ultimate stop in New England was Armidale, where they joined the 33rd Battalion under the command of Major Leslie Morshead.
(In World War II, the then Lieutenant General Leslie James Morshead led Australian and British troops at the Siege of Tobruk and the Second Battle of El Alamein.
(This spawned the "Rats of Tobruk" legend.)
After training at Armidale, the Kurrajongs, as part of the 33rd Battalion, set sail to Plymouth, England, from where they were sent to France five days before Christmas, 1916.
Their ultimate destiny was Belgium, for the third and final Battle of Ypres, also known as the battle of Passchendaele.
The muddy fields, in which many wounded soldiers drowned, could not have been further from the blue skies and open lands of New England.
The gloom was only interrupted by a distant railway junction, Roulers, a small thicket called Polygon Wood and Menin Road, which led to the Front Line.
Fighting at Ypres had been more or less consistent since 1914 and, by 1917, when the Kurrajongs were deployed, it was barely more than a muddy, desolate area.
The Third Battle of Ypres claimed 38,000 Australian soldiers.
In one of those battles, on September 20, two Australian divisions sustained 5013 casualties while killing, wounding, or capturing about 4200 Germans.
It has often been described as being one of the most senseless battles of all times; the aim was to capture the Passchendaele ridge, held by German forces and from where they blocked occupied ports on the English Channel coast, just north of Ypres.
In October and November, the Australians, along with the Belgians, Canadians and British, gave a final push to capture Passchendaele,
It proved a senseless battle, as British prime minister David Lloyd George noted in his memoirs.
Exhausted, the Australians were forced to retreat and hand over to their allies, the Canadians.
That corps eventually took Passchendaele on November 6, bringing the operation to a close.
But it claimed the highest number of Australian casualties from any battle in World War I.
One in five Kurrajongs did not return and many others were badly wounded or gassed.
Once again at dawn, memorial services will be held across the New England and further afield, in Australia and New Zealand.
Anzac Day has come to hold different meaning over the years and those original Anzacs and others who fought in World War I have long since died, their memories live on.
Lest we forget.
