Kate Middleton Honors Anzac Day with Wreath at London Cenotaph

The Princess of Wales honoured Commonwealth soldiers as she laid a wreath at The Cenotaph on Whitehall to mark Anzac Day. Hundreds of people watched as the solemn ceremony commemorated the 1915 Gallipoli landing of Australian and New Zealand troops in the First World War. A woman in a New Zealand military uniform handed the princess a wreath, which she placed at the foot of the national war memorial. The ring of poppies with white flowers on top had a note signed Catherine and William that read: “In memory of the Australian and New Zealand soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom”. The high commissioners for New Zealand and Australia, Hamish Cooper and Jay Weatherill, then walked in tandem to lay their wreaths.

Reverend Dr Lyndon Drake recited from The Fallen by English poet Laurence Binyon: “They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; age shall not weary them nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.” A Royal Marines Portsmouth Road Band trumpeter played the Last Post and a one-minute silence followed. Kate joined attendees singing the hymn O God Our Help in Ages Past before the men and women in military uniforms marched off Whitehall. The princess will join a commemoration and thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey later on Saturday.

The Gallipoli campaign, part of a British-led effort to defeat the Ottoman Empire, aimed to secure a naval route through the Dardanelles from the Mediterranean Sea to Constantinople, now Istanbul, in Turkey. More than 100,000 troops died.

#AnzacDay, #RoyalRemembrance, #KateMiddleton