Not because one of my relatives fought in the World War I campaign, but because I want to commemorate the people who fought for the lifestyle I now enjoy.

And that tradition has now extended to my own children.

My eldest son will join me for the Launceston dawn service this coming Wednesday.

It is a tradition the two of us have shared for several years and is something he considers to be ours.

Master 11 will also be marching from Princes Square later that morning.

He has been taught the historical basics of the battle at the Gallipoli Peninsula as a primary school pupil, but I was able to fill him in on what it felt like to walk through a trench that was not much wider than me – and still riddled with spent bullet casings.

I watched the sun rise over Anzac Cove 15 years ago, the plaintive notes of the Last Post washing over me as I thawed out from a cold April night under the Turkish stars.

One of 9,000 Australians and New Zealanders who attended the 2003 Anzac Day service at Gallipoli, I got a small taste of what thousands, a decade younger than me, had experienced so far from home.

Travelling by ferry through the Dardanelles and around Gallipoli Peninsula the day before, I’d had my first site of Anzac Cove and the steep, rugged cliffs the soldiers were forced to climb after they landed at the wrong site.

While I heard no gunfire, there was still a military presence – armed Turkish security personnel were dotted around the hills watching out for threats as another war was underway in neighbouring Iraq.

I spent the night on the grassy area behind the beach, surrounded by thousands who were also rugged up against the cold wind blowing in from the Aegean Sea.

It occurred to me that the clear, cold night was not unlike the night, 90 years before, when the soldiers set off from their battleships, carrying 45-kilogram packs and rifles, nervous and unsure of what was ahead.

But it wasn’t just Australians and New Zealanders who were commemorating their troops that day.

Representatives from Britain, Turkey and India stood beside us, making me realise the Gallipoli campaign is not solely owned by the Southern Hemisphere but, rather, has international significance.

I felt proud to be representing my nation that morning, and I knew everyone who had weathered the cold night before felt the same as we sang our national anthems at the end of our individual services.

After the dawn service I joined the steady stream of people walking up the hill from Anzac Cove.

I remember the poignant moment when I crested the hill to see line upon line of graves marking where so many Australian soldiers had died at Lone Pine – or where it was thought they died.

What stood out more, though, were the thousands of stones missing. The names of soldiers with no known grave are marked on the Lone Pine Memorial.

The Gallipoli campaign lasted nine months and more than 44,000 Allied soliders died. But at 87,000 casualties, Turkish losses were double that number.

Bulent Ecevit’s poem, Gallipoli: A Postwar Epic, sums up the profound loss during war.

“… It was a ruthless war

yet breeding respect

in heart-to-heart exchange

as confronting trenches fell into closer range

turning foe to friend

as the fighters reached their end

the war came to a close

those who survived

returned to their lands and homes

leaving the dead behind…

lying side by side as friends in each other’s arms

they may sleep in comfort and peace

in the land for which they died.”