But for many women veterans it can also be a time of heightened anxiety as they begin pinning their medals to their left breast.

It is customary for veterans and serving ADF personnel to wear their service medals on the left side, while family members marching in honour of past-serving loved ones are required to wear them on the right side.

In the lead up to this year’s ANZAC commemorations, a new campaign initiated by the Women Veterans Network Australia (WVNA) called ‘By The Left’ seeks to promote better understanding of female veterans’ service and their legitimate wearing of service medals.

Campaign organiser Kellie Dadds, a veteran who has been deployed eight times, says women veterans regularly find themselves wrongly challenged in person or via social media about wearing their husband’s/father’s/grandfather’s medals on the wrong side, an offensive slur that has upset some women veterans so much they’ve stopped attending commemorative events altogether.

“I can immediately think of two female colleagues I have served with who have been asked whether the medals they wear are their own, or have been told ‘You’re wearing your Dad’s medals on the wrong side’. As a male, I’ve never had this said to me,” veteran Ben Gray said on the By the Left Facebook page.

The Returned Services League (RSL) has gotten behind the movement and is this year featuring women veterans at the head of the march, directly behind the State Governor.

“By The Left is just asking to set the record straight and to confirm the legitimacy of female veterans in the public eye. If that means that for one year, for just one year out of the last 90 marches, they march at the front of the parade, what do other veterans lose? Really, what do we lose?” Mr Gray said.

But Bill Shepherd, who was until recently the president of the Nambucca Heads RSL (the local sub-branch with the largest contingent of female veterans) said they had always let women march at the front.

“We let our women veterans march wherever they want, whether it’s up front, in the middle, or with their family,” he said.

“And we've always been there to squash any problems on the spot.

“We’ve always had a culture here of showing our women the utmost respect.”

Dawn services commence at 5.30am tomorrow at Bowraville, Macksville, Nambucca Heads, Scotts Head, Stuarts Point and Taylors Arm.