Woken by smart phone bells and whistles, the crowd which gathered under moonlight in Brisbane's Anzac Square could only imagine waking to the Reveille on that fated day a century ago.
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We know those Queensland sons were greeted by a night sky much like the one which cloaked the more than 20,000 who shuffled towards the city's sacred shrine, clear, heavy with stars and silent.
Their moon was half full. Ours slightly larger than the Turkish Crescent we learnt about at school. They knew not what the day would bring. We do. And it still grieves us 100 years later.
Not all who don military garb are heroes, a fact the Anzac legend relies heavily on.
British superiors, led by the man we would later proclaim a saviour of the free world, miscalculated. Terribly.
No, not all who don military garb are heroes, but for every soul which shares in the honourable burden of grief, hope and gratitude April 25 bequeaths on those who came after, the uniform those diggers donned when they threw their bodies and blood upon Turkish soil, may as well have included capes.
Queensland gave much to the First World War, including the first Anzac footsteps on the sands of the Gallipoli landing.
A moustached Lieutenant Duncan Chapman, a 26-year-old son of the small Queensland town of Maryborough, a paymaster in his life before a soldier, happened to be in the bow of the first ship holding Australian and New Zealand troops to hit solid ground.
He leaped free of the boat and the sand of Gallipoli cove was distorted for the first time under the weight of an antipodeans' step.
A year later, as a Major, he would mark French soil with his life.
Just over 250 kilometres from where tens of thousands gathered in the state's capital to pay tribute to men like Major Chapman, one of the 40 per cent of Queensland young sons we sent to war between 1914 and 1918, a bronze statue in his likeness was unveiled in the town he would never see again.
More than 300 bugles sounded across Queensland as the dawn broke, their players' breath lingering in the air before the silence of shared hears and laden lids bellowed.
Great grandfathers, uncles, cousins, names and sepia photos all, they are remembered. Shared memories of exploding sand smokes gripped by laconic grins flash, a hive consciousness forged by a lifetime of curriculums and ceremony.
We mark the moment we know they began to fall by placing flowers by a flame. They died to protect a freedom we have never lived without, in a battle we still fight, this new war evident in the number of armed police scattered throughout the Brisbane crowd.
There are those in the crowd who know the terror of combat, their chests heavy with the weight of service. Their reverence is honoured by those whose lives have been unmarked by duty to Queen and country, because someone else heeded the call.
Ken McNeil brings his three daughters, Emma, 13, Matilda, 9 and seven-year-old Jessica to the Brisbane dawn service each year. Between them, the girls have only missed four services in their lifetime. They have no family connection to that day, or war, or those that came hence, but are filled with gratitude for those who do.
"It's a small sacrifice for us to get up early to honour those who served, or serve," Mr McNeil said.
"To remember the soldiers," Jessica, adds in a small voice.
We're told by poets and those charged with writing the first draft of history that our soldiers did not falter, that they were staunch to the end.
But we know that can't be true.
It is because we know the fear they must have felt, the bewilderment, the confusion, the not-knowing, the regrets which must have shrouded them, but yet continued to move forward, to do the job they felt duty bound to embrace, that we rise to honour them.
And once the wreaths are laid and lips have moved in verse not sung since school days, Brisbane gathers in another way to remember the fallen, the wounded and those who answered the call.
Michael Bonoguore rose at midnight to travel from Queensland's apple country to the city to help cook more than 3500 snags, the same again in short cut bacon "and obviously the same again in bloody eggs", for the masses, who exchanged a gold coin for the comfort of a warm repast and a warmer rum toddy.
The state's Lion's Clubs and Legacy will split the proceeds, but it's the sharing of food which helps lift the fog of sorrow which always seems to accompany the sound of a bugle in the pre-dawn light.
The dawn is for the dead. The sunlight and the 30-40,000 people expected to cheer the 25,000 strong Brisbane parade marchers, for the living. And the day, as always and forever, to remember.
Lest we forget.
