ROYAL Australian Navy Commodore Charles Huxtable will lead Orange's Anzac Day march when it returns to its former glory on Monday, April 25.
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President and Trustee of the City of Orange sub branch Chris Colvin confirmed the Returned and Services League of Australia would this year be returning Anzac Day marches to their pre-COVID levels of participation.
Mr Colvin said Commodore Huxtable, the RAN Commodore of Training, will lead the Summer Street march, which the Orange branch is predicting will attract a healthy cohort of participants.
Commodore Huxtable, who will also speak at the 11am service, was previously the Commanding Officer at HMAS Creswell with time also spent at HMAS Watson.
While Orange's march went ahead last year, Mr Colvin said COVID-19 restrictions meant crowds were down while the school groups where reduced to school leaders only.
"This year it's back to normal, back to 2019," he said. The exception will be the Dawn Service which is starting at 6am, half an hour later than previous years.
Anzac Day is the day we became an army nation, it was our first real kick in the guts basically.
- RSL Orange Sub Branch President Chris Colvin
Mr Colvin said this year's march will be the last time descendants of World War I and II veterans would march under banners marking those conflicts.
He explained that since 2015, those banners had been paraded behind serving and ex-serving troops, enabling descendants to march. Had there still been veterans from those wars marching, it would normally feature higher up the march.
"That banner will be retired this year," Mr Colvin said.
"It should have been retired, I'm going to say, back in the 1980s because there was no veterans to march behind it. But we are going to raise a new banner for the Descendants of the First and Second World Wars for the next few ANZAC Day services."
Mr Colvin said the Orange Sub Branch was expecting around 10,000 people to line Summer Street and attend the service at the Robertson Park cenotaph from 11am.
"I think people have missed it," he said adding the state of affairs in Eastern Europe also made the event a lightning rod for national pride.
"Remembrance Day is the day we commemorate all the fallen, Anzac Day is the day we became an army nation, it was our first real kick in the guts basically."
The march will start from the Memorial Hall in Anson Street at around 10.15am. Muster is at 10am.
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