Hundreds attend Port Fairy and Koroit Anzac Day services

Mr Kelly spoke about the impact of war on service men and women and their families, mental health and the changing face of war at Anzac Day events at Port Fairy and Koroit on Tuesday.

Mr Kelly joined the navy in 1998 serving as an electrical engineer on the Collins-class submarines and later for the army in Afghanistan in support of the special operations task group.

He spoke of the estimated 60,000 soldiers killed in World War I and the 41 soldiers killed in Afghanistan but said the "confronting numbers" didn't address the later mental health death and injuries experienced when soldiers returned home.

"Throughout history war has taken a horrendous toll on the men, women and families who've served and also those who remained behind," Mr Kelly said.

He said those left behind had the stress of running a family alone, with the knowledge their loved ones were away and might not return home.

"While we've come a long way in addressing mental health and understanding the impacts of war has on our mental health I personally feel this is an almost inevitable outcome and politicians should expect, plan and resource for the mental health crisis afterwards," Mr Kelly said.

He said it was important to understand war affected people in different ways. "We also know reactions can be delayed until years afterwards and triggered by seemingly innocuous and unrelated events," he said.

Mr Kelly said war today looked very different to what our Anzac namesakes experienced and he suspected "by the time our children serve it will have changed again".

He said modern deployment to Afghanistan had soldiers in the field fighting Taliban to arriving home to their families in around 72 hours which wasn't enough time to decompress from what they'd just experienced.

"On these deployments every car ride was a potential IED (improvised explosive device) strike, every person including kids, would potentially shoot you and even the police couldn't be trusted... the transition between war and home was simply too short and some of us never adapted to normal life," he said.

"It's changing times. We were home from our trips dealing with families and kids and trying not to go off the rails. They say the long return home of four to six weeks on the ship (decades earlier) were important decompression for (military) people."

Mr Kelly said future conflicts would become "even more remote" placing "huge stress" on military personnel and their families.

"In the future our children will go to war without even leaving the country," he said. "Already the US flies predator and reaper drones in Afghanistan but they're piloted from air conditioned huts back home in the US. These soldiers go from flying drones and dropping missiles to home in less than an hour."

Mr Kelly said it was great to see growing attendee numbers at the two services. He said it was vital they kept going.

"It's a huge day and it's getting the families out here and making them aware of what military service is about...It's good to make people aware of what our service men and women do and it's not just them it's their families as well," he said.

Port Fairy Julienne Clifford, whose husband Mick served in the navy for 37 years and is the Port Fairy RSL vice president, said it was great to have younger veterans involved in the service.

"It's really important to hear those voices as well as the voices of our older veterans," Mrs Clifford said.

Mr Kelly led the Port Fairy service with the help of Port Fairy RSL president Doug Nolte, who also co-ordinated the Koroit event.

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