"Anzac Day 1920 was widely considered the most impressive yet held. The day fell on a Sunday and provided the ‘close’ conditions that the RSA was lobbying to achieve by legislation. In Auckland, Anzac Day also had the presence of the Prince of Wales on a worldwide ‘thank-you’ tour. But the occasion was enhanced too with the adoption of a new Anzac Day service.

In a move intended to secure uniformity in the manner of observance throughout the country, RSA national president Dr Ernest Boxer promoted a model Anzac Day service that represented a symbolic re-enactment of a burial at the front. It came complete with a solemn parade of returned soldiers behind a gun carriage accompanied by a uniform bearer party that later formed a catafalque guard, with bowed heads over reversed arms, around a symbolic bier consisting of wreaths and a soldier’s hat. Addresses were confined to mourning and remembrance. Marches and hymns were also deeply mournful. The climax came with the symbolic burial service conducted by an army padre, the silent pause symbolising the committal. The service concluded with a gun salute, followed by the sounding of the Last Post.

Boxer, effectively choreographing a ritual of mourning, stressed that the essential aspects of the service was to create a ‘sacred place’ and to achieve ‘the right mood for its sacredness’. Participants, for example, were to be requested not to applaud during the service. Although run by the RSA the mood was appropriate for the thousands of families who had been deprived of the solace of funerals for loved ones lost overseas. Boxer acknowledged that returned soldiers ‘may not feel this [mood]’ but that the relatives ‘certainly will’. Returned soldiers would have ample opportunity to remember in their own way within the confines of RSA receptions later in the day. It was the start of the private and public ritual of Anzac Day.

Many centres, such as Dunedin, adopted the entire ‘Boxer Service’, as it was known, while others incorporated parts of it into the service that they had developed over the preceding years. More than the form, however, it was the sentiment that was universal throughout New Zealand, an appropriate mood during the immediate postwar period. Although reformed in later decades, the ‘Boxer Service’ ritualised the solemn mood of Anzac Day observances in New Zealand, in stark contrast with the more celebratory nature of the observance in Australia."

Dr Stephen Clarke. Centenary of the Anzac Day Act. Auckland War Memorial Museum - Tāmaki Paenga Hira. First published: 7 April 2020. AWMM