Anzac Day was a proud day for Ted and Alison Fergus yesterday, with huge support and love from their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren at the march and commemoration service.
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Ted, who served with the British Army in the immediate post-war period, and again with the Australian Army where he saw action as an infantryman in Korea, was wheeled in the march by his sons and a grandson, two of whom had come from Queensland to be with him on the day.
Over the past few years he has ridden in a car to the commemoration service, but this year enjoyed getting there in his wheelchair.
Joining the British Army just before the end of World War 11, he was posted almost immediately to Berlin, and then Hamburg, with the occupation forces.
He was then sent to Austria, arriving in Vienna and then going to some German prisoner of war camps, where he helped bring prisoners out of the appalling conditions in which they had lived.
It was a traumatic experience even for those freeing the prisoners.
Ted recalled that the smell of the prisons was almost too much to bear.
Returning to Britain and leaving the Army in 1949, he emigrated to Australia in 1951 and almost immediately joined the Australian Army, then involved in the Korean war.
He was sent as an infantryman to Korea, where he served for nearly a year in active service as a bren gunner.
"Korea was a good place to go away from," he recalls, "we got leave for three weeks and all went to Japan."
Returning to Australia in 1952 he remained in the Army working in ordinance, before leaving in 1956 and taking up work as a plasterer, a trade he continued in until his retirement.
Ted's son Michael and grandson Ty, both now living in Queensland, returned to Coota for Anzac Day.
Michael, of Ipswich, was with the RAAF at Amberley from 76-85 and Ty, of Springfield Lakes, is currently with the Army at Amberley.
The Cootamundra sub-branch of the RSL thanked the 1/19 Royal NSW Regiment at Wagga for providing the catafalque party who mounted the steps at four corners of the Cenotaph at the beginning of the service, staying in position until the close.
They also thanked the bugler, Lachlan Wordsworth, of 219 ACU, and the Cootamundra Concert Band and Choir which accompanied two hymns and the national anthem, as well as the Pipers.
Delivering his commemoration address, Commodore Darron Kavanagh said the ANZAC legend was born at Gallipoli on 25th of April and reinforced in the "blood, mud and horror of the first world war battlefields".
Through a sailor's eyes, Australia's contribution began before then, with he first service death of Able Seaman Billy Williams, a member of the first group of Australians ashore at Rabaul.
"It is right that on ANZAC Day we remember the sacrifice of our army, who have borne the greatest cost of all the services with over 88,000 names listed on the Australian War Memorial roll of honour.
"But that roll also includes well over 11,000 air force and 2,500 naval personnel, and today we remember them all."