New look Anzac Day planned for memorial THE Australian War Memorial's Anzac Day dawn service will this year feature the projected names and images of famous battles on the front of the monument and VC winner Ben Roberts-Smith recounting events from Afghanistan. In a significant makeover of a solemn event which in recent years has attracted record crowds, new memorial director Brendan Nelson says the service will also be displayed on big screens. He says he decided there needed to be change after three people told him they had given up attending because their children couldn't see what was going on. Perhaps just 1000 of the 25,000 who attended last year's service could actually see what was happening. "We are working against our mission when families are not bringing their children because they can't see anything," Dr Nelson said on Wednesday. The ceremony will be displayed on two large screens. From midnight, the names of some 90 iconic battles will be projected onto the front of the memorial. Then from 4.30am to 5am, there will be readings of diary and letter excerpts and descriptions of various campaigns. At 5am, Corporal Roberts-Smith VC will recite reflections from soldiers in Afghanistan. The main march and national service later in the morning will also feature Corporal Roberts-Smith, along with an army Bushmaster and two ASLAV vehicles. "These events ... are as much for the veterans of our contemporary conflicts in East Timor, Solomon Islands, Iraq and Afghanistan as they are for those from Vietnam and Korea and those remaining from the second world war," Dr Nelson said. I would like to think that there are some serving men and women, some veterans, who would think it worth coming to Canberra to the war memorial for Anzac Day. Back in 2005, officials sought to entertain the crowd waiting for the Gallipoli dawn service by screening music videos, an idea now regarded as inappropriate for the solemn occasion. Dr Nelson said there would be no music at the memorial other than that provided by the Defence Wives Choir and the Rugby Choir who sing the hymns at the dawn and national services. "What I am trying to do is to enhance the commemorative experience, certainly not diminish it," he said.