World War I revelation changes how ABC reporter Alexander Darling sees Anzac Day

I have never commemorated Anzac Day in any significant way.

As a child, I always looked forward to seeing Essendon and Collingwood at the MCG and I absorbed with awe the spectacle of 100,000 people standing silently.

But until this year I never fully appreciated why we get up early and stand so introspectively in the middle of our towns and cities.

I knew my great-grandfather Frederick Brooke Darling – Fred, as he was known — had been a captain during World War I and had his leg blown off by a shell, but that was about it. 

I wasn’t much interested in knowing more: I never knew him – he died 11…