THE SACRIFICE of service men and women from Australia and New Zealand to the Allied cause in the first and second world wars was marked in Arbroath yesterday with a special ceremony at the Western Cemetery.

Today is ANZAC Day—the anniversary of the ill-fated amphibious landings at what was later renamed ANZAC Cove in the Dardanelles when thousands of Allied lives were lost—many of them from Australia and New Zealand.

The Commonwealth War Graves section of the Western Cemetery in Arbroath is the final rest- ing place of four New Zealanders—Brian Patterson, Jim Drake, Richard Chettle and Frederick Batten—and since 1998 their countrymen, Australians and others from across Scotland have gathered to pay tribute at the graves.

The four men served with the Fleet Air Arm in the second world war and, at the ceremony, they have come to represent the hundreds of New Zealanders and Australians from all branches of the services who are buried in war graves the length and breadth of Scotland.

Yesterday’s ceremony was attended by the Lord Lieutenant of Angus, Mrs Georgiana Osborne, whose mother came to the UK from New Zealand on an ANZAC troopship, Georgina Roberts, from the New Zealand High Commission, Angus Provost Bill Middleton and representatives of the New Zealand Air Force.