By KATH GANNAWAY
HOW do people learn to go out and shoot someone?
It was one of the more challenging questions that came up when Yarra Junction Primary School students started researching former students who went off fight in WWI.
On Friday, the school honoured the 43 men, planting a rosemary bush for each in an avenue of honour.
The ceremony was co-ordinated by project members who are part of the school’s Gifted and Talented Program.
Program co-ordinator Leanne Hancock said the experience had been a revelation for everyone involved.
“They have made such strong connections to these people and their lives,” she said.
“They see a house where they lived, or they had a shop that they go to even now.
“The youngest soldier was 17 and some of the kids were saying ‘that’s my brother’s age’, or ‘I have a friend who is 17’, so they have become real people, even though it is 100 years later.”
She said it was baffling for the students that young people not unlike people they know, could be working as a saw miller, or a shopkeeper and suddenly left home and had to shoot people they didn’t know.
“The stories of the ceasefires, where soldiers from each side would talk to each other … they loved that,” Ms Hancock said.
She said the school had a huge amount of support from the Upper Yarra Museum and, in particular, from historians Bob Sutherland and Dawn Cantwell who shared their information and research and showed artefacts and medals.
Ms Hancock said the aim was to get the students emotionally involved and that the focus for the students involved in the project was on the human side of war.
Ten of the 47 never returned home.
“It makes it real, and it makes them feel connected,” she said.
