ON April 25, 1915, members of the 1st Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, in effecting a landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula, were met by fire from hidden machine guns, which caused a great number of casualties. The soldiers overcame supreme difficulties to secure their position and six of their number were awarded the VC for their gallantry.

Cpt Richard Willis, Cpt Cuthbert Bromley, Sgt Alfred Richards, Sgt Frank Stubbs, Cpl John Grimshaw and Pte William Kenealy were the soldiers who won the Fusiliers their famous six VCs before breakfast.

Eighty-two years on and the borough still remembers that day when hundreds of local men, many just boys, stormed the Turkish-held W Beach faced by a storm of bombs and bullets.

While all local survivors have since past away, the commemoration of the Gallipoli campaign in Bury on Sunday (April 27) was, and will be for a long time, very much an integral part of the town's tradition.

The 200-strong local Army volunteers marched through the streets with bayonets fixed and drums beating, followed by those who lost friends, husbands, brothers, and fathers.

Adding to the numbers were junior and senior members of the Army, the RAF, the Royal Navy, the fire service, the police, and the borough's senior civic leaders. Also paying their respects was the Australian consul in Manchester, Mr Hamish Lindsay, and his mother-in-law, Mrs Madge Bonnefin, who served with the Royal Australian Airforce during the Second World War.

A service was held in Bury Parish Church followed by a wreath-laying and a final march-past.

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