SIX hundred soldiers from the Lancashire Fusiliers were among those remembered in a dawn pilgrimage to mark the 100th anniversary of the doomed Gallipoli campaign on Saturday.

Both the Prince of Wales and Prince Harry joined 10,000 people at a special site in Gallipoli, the site of a terrible defeat for the Allies, where 115,000 of their soldiers were killed.

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The day is now marked every year in Australia and New Zealand as Anzac Day, a time for national commemoration of their own troops from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corp (Anzac). But also among those honoured were the 1,000 Lancastrians who stormed the beach at Helles on the peninsula under murderous fire from troops from the Ottoman Empire, in what is now Turkey.

Just 21 of the first 200 Fusiliers on the beach, later renamed Lancashire Landing in their honour, survived, while 600 were injured or killed.

Despite the heavy losses, the soldiers took the beach in an action later branded ‘Six Victoria Crosses before Breakfast’ after the spirited actions of six men from the regiment.

The huge crowd on Saturday watched the story of the Gallipoli disaster on big screens as they sat in sombre respect beneath the starry, chilly skies.

Australia’s prime minister Tony Abbott and New Zealand premier John Key were at the ceremony near Anzac Cove. Other dignitaries included Irish president Michael Higgins.

The Last Post was sounded and the sacrifice of the soldiers and their families was remembered in a minute’s silence.

Afterwards, Mr Abbott said: “The sheer scale of what they attempted to do ... It was impossible but they did so much and almost succeeded.”

Meanwhile, a commemorative event was also held in Bury, while the six Victoria Cross medals ‘won before breakfast’ went on show together for the first time ever at the Fusiliers Museum, also in Bury.

Among the dead was Lieutenant and Quartermaster Norman Victor Holden, son of the Rev William and Kate Holden, from Brindle Rectory, Chorley.

It is in the town that an annual service of commemoration has been held every Sunday, the nearest to April 25, since 1916.

Next year, Blackburn Museum will be running community projects, one of them likely to be focssed on the Lancashire sacrifice in Gallipol.,.