Students from St Patrick’s Primary School at Sutherland participated in a symbolic walk at Woronora Memorial Park this week to commemorate the centenary of the WW1 battle for Villers-Bretonneux in France.
Their walk, on Wednesday, April 11, was to acknowledge those Australian troops who fought and died in armed conflict overseas and in particular, those who fell in the Battle of Villers-Bretonneux.
The students carried a hundred tiny wooden crosses decorated with personal messages of tribute to the diggers.
Their destination was the memorial Australian digger Walter Ernest Brown who served on the Western Front in WWI, receiving the Victoria Cross.
He also served in WWII and was presumed killed in in the Fall of Singapore in 1942. His body was never found.
His son, also called Walter, died of meningitis the following year, aged seven and, Walter senior’s widow, Maude Brown placed a memorial to her husband on their son’s grave.
The students from St Patrick’s Primary School left their crosses and tributes on the memorial Walter Brown and his son.
Later the crosses were gathered up and will be taken the Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery in France by Woronora Memorial Park chief executive officer, Graham Boyd.
An Anzac Day dawn service will be held this year to mark the Centenary of the Battle of Villers-Bretonneux