Banners have been erected along Summer Street in the lead up to Anzac Day to remember local servicemen who died while serving in the armed forces during wartime.

It is the second year Orange City Council has produced the banners in cooperation with the Orange RSL sub-branch, as part of the Local Fallen project.

The 40 new street banners feature the images and names of servicemen from Orange and the region who died during the Boer War, World War I and II, as well as conflicts in Vietnam and Korea. Information about each of the servicemen has also been included in the heritage section of the Orange City Council website

Orange Mayor Tony Mileto welcomed the display of street banners in the main street.

“The deaths of each of these men left a huge toll on their families and the wider Orange community at the time,” Cr Mileto said.

“The sacrifice of these servicemen is an important part of our local history and I’m proud their stories can be remembered in this very public way.”

The information in the banners has been compiled by the Orange RSL sub-branch, who found about 200 Orange servicemen and women killed in wartime. It’s expected to take several years to acknowledge them all with street banners.

Cr Mileto said the 40 new banners each tell a poignant story of the cost to local families of Australia’s involvement in conflicts overseas.

“One banner records the death of 21-year-old Sydney Smith from Orange who died at Leeuwkop in South Africa during the Boer War in 1901,” Cr Mileto said.

“There’s Walter Dalliston who was killed in action in Korea in 1952 and John Nunn who died while imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp in Borneo in 1945.

“There’s the tragedy of a local 20-year-old man, Tom Hanratty, who died in the Solomon Islands just one month before the war ended in the Pacific, and 25-year-old Bert Robert Shaw from Orange who died on the first day of the Gallipoli landing.

“These banners are an important step in remembering the sacrifice of our local fallen.”

Commemorations for Anzac Day this Friday, April 25, will proceed along similar lines to previous years.

The Dawn Service will commence at 6am at the Cenotaph in Robertson Park. Veterans are asked to assemble in front of the Memorial Hall in Anson Street by 5.45am to march to Robertson Park at 5.50am.

The Morning Service at the Cenotaph in Robertson Park will begin following the march at 11am.

Anyone wishing to march is asked to form up outside the Memorial Hall in Anson Street at 10am, with the march to depart at about 10:40am.

This Anzac Day marks 110 years since the landing of Australian and New Zealand forces on the beaches of the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey.