Gallipoli 100 Years: “We will never forget”

Noreen Baxter, as pictured in this week's WHO Magazine, on sale now. Photo: WHO Magazine

As the ANZAC Centenary draws closer, an Australian daughter of a Gallipoli veteran is preparing for an emotional dawn service in Turkey.

“I will walk down through the trenches and feel the distance they were fighting across,” Noreen Baxter, a mother of two who lives in Brisbane, tells WHO.

Baxter’s father was George “Peachy” Green, a sheep farmer living in Broomehill, WA, who enlisted at age 22 and was part of the first wave of troops to storm Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.

“He just fought; he was an infanteer,” says Baxter, 78. “He was wounded four times. He carried shrapnel in his back for the rest of his life. He was in Gallipoli from the start to the finish.”

The centenary will be observed on April 25 in Turkey with a number of services, including a dawn service at the Anzac Commemorative Site near Anzac Cove to be attended by 10,000 Australians, including direct descendants of Gallipoli veterans, who received a pass through a ballot which more than 40,000 people entered.

“This year, Dad will have three generations of descendants at Gallipoli,” says Baxter who has two adult sons with her husband Ramon. “I know it will be emotional having the boys with us as we walk in the footsteps of my father.”

For more of Noreen Baxter’s story and the stories of other ANZAC descendants, pick up a copy of WHO, on sale now.