Collegiate, Hutchins students to sing at Villers-Bretonneux in France on Anzac Day

BETWEEN rehearsals for the choir performance of their lives, 33 Tasmanian teenagers have been lost in thought.

Michael Young, 16, and Victoria Merton, 16, at the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux in France. Picture: Hamish Paterson, ADF

BETWEEN rehearsals for the choir performance of their lives, 33 Tasmanian teenagers have been lost in thought.

The students from Hobart’s St Michael’s Collegiate and The Hutchins School will sing in today’s Dawn Service in the Somme.

But in the past few days, the choir has spent a lot of time visiting war memorials and speaking to locals in France and Belgium in the lead up to Anzac Day.

When their voices ring out from 1.30pm Tasmanian time at the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux in France today, they will be singing for their schools, their country and the tens of thousands who died on the Western Front.

“I’m proud but also humbled to be part of the service itself, proud to be representing my state but most of all proud to be an Australian,’’ Hutchins student Michael Young, 16, said.

Victoria Merton, 16, of Collegiate, has been struck by the evidence of war in places around Ypres in Belgium and the Somme in France.

“When you go to Villers-Bretonneux, it’s amazing to see how they still love Australians,’’ she said.