Gold coin day on November 11 to raise funds for Pozieres school

IN just six weeks in 1916 more than 23,000 Australian troops were killed or wounded around Pozieres. Now a whole new generation is set to help the small French town.

Soldiers waiting to go over the top during the World War I Battle of Pozieres in France. one

TO mark the close links between Australia and the French town of Pozieres a group of Australian historians and the charity Camp Gallipoli have launched a campaign to build a new school in the village.

The current school is a meagre one-room building and the project would mirror a 1920 effort when Victorian schoolchildren contributed pennies to help fund a school at the town of Villers Bretoneux.

In just six weeks during July and August 1916 more than 23,000 Australian troops were killed or wounded around Pozieres on the Western Front.

The battle of Pozieres marked one of the darkest periods in Australian military history with about 7000 young Australian men making the ultimate sacrifice among the carnage that was the Somme.

The grave stones of soldiers killed in the Battle of Somme line up at sunset at the Pozieres Memorial. Picture: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

On Remembrance Day this year, school students around the country will be asked to donate a gold coin to help raise the $2 million needed to build the Australian school.

The project was launched by NSW Governor David Hurley at St Clair High School near Penrith in Sydney.

St Clair High principal Chris Presland said the project had been embraced by many schools and he hoped that most would participate in the gold coin collection.

“It is incredibly important that students understand the contribution that Australia made on the Western Front,” Mr Presland said.

Stretcher bearers return from battle in Pozieres, 1916. Picture: Supplied

“It is about understanding the sacrifice in that area and the impact it made on the French people who still place massive emphasis on the contribution of Australia.”

He said the gold coin project was a tangible way for Australian students to connect with that sense of history.

Historian and award winning film maker Will Davies said the aim was to replicate the Villers Bretonneux project at a place where many more young Australians died by rebuilding the small,

dilapidated school in Pozieres.

“After a minute’s silence at 11am, it is proposed that a slouch hat will be passed around the classroom and money collected will be banked and remitted directly to the Pozieres School Fund account at the Westpac Bank,” Mr Davies said.

“We plan to turn the first sod on 23 July 2016 and to officially open the school in 2018.”

The plan includes a new primary school with seven classrooms, a teachers’ common room, a small library, toilets and an assembly hall.

There is also the possibility of first floor accommodation with two dormitories or bunk rooms, teachers’ rooms, a breakfast room, a small kitchen, showers and toilets.

This would provide accommodation for visiting Australian school groups who could make Pozières the centre of their Western Front tour.

According to official historian Charles Bean, the Pozieres ridge “was captured on August 4th by Australian troops who fell more thickly on this ridge than on any other battlefield of the war.”

The school will be a fitting living memorial to such a remarkable sacrifice.

Originally published as Gold coin day on November 11 to raise funds for Pozieres school