New Zealander Lyn Griffiths never got to meet her grandfather, but this Anzac day she will honour his memory on the battlefield where he was fatally shot a hundred years ago.
The Maungaturoto office administrator is one of the lucky Kiwis to win a ticket to Gallipoli for Anzac Day where she'll take in this year's centenary celebrations.
Her grandfather William John Griffiths played the tuba in the NZ Army Band and enlisted a month after war was declared, leaving behind a 13-month-old son, a three-year-old daughter and his wife, Maud.
"My grandmother always said that he went because of his love of the band, that was the reason he went so he could play in the band," Ms Griffiths said.
"She was always a bit antsy towards that."
Mr Griffiths ended up in Gallipoli, where he would have played at night and served as a stretcher bearer during the day.
In August he was hit by bullets to his head and thigh and taken to hospital in Alexandria, Egypt, where he died within days.
"I didn't realise how dangerous it was until a few years ago. But when you start to realise what they did ... It must have been absolute hell," Ms Griffiths said.
It's been a lifelong dream to honour her grandfather by visiting the place where he fought.
"It's going to be incredibly, incredibly moving. The whole thing of being on the battlefield overnight is just going to be amazing. I'm going to be on the battlefield where my grandfather was," she said.
Ms Griffith knows very little about her grandfather - her grandmother remarried, and her father never knew his own father - but she's always observed Anzac Day.
She's hoping she'll get more of an understanding of what her grandfather went through by going, and she'll also be thinking of her father Victor, who served in WWII.
"It really does mean a lot. I'm going for the family, to represent our family in memory of our grandad."
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