Battlefield horror comes alive for students

STUDENTS walk battlefields along the trenches of the Western Front to mark 100 years since the battles at Fromelles and Pozieres.

Mitchell Price at Passchendaele where he spent the day with other scholars at an educational program called "Life at the Front".

WALKING on the battlefields and along the trenches of the Western Front, Cranebrook High School student Mitchell Price envisioned what soldiers would have endured when they fought and died there 100 years ago.

Mitchell, 15, was one of 24 outstanding Year 10 and 11 NSW students who travelled in July to the battlefields and memorial sites of the Western Front as winners of the 2016 Premier’s Anzac Memorial Scholarship.

Mitchell Price, 15, of Cranebrook High School experienced a taste of life on the World War One battlefields.

The students attended commemorative services held to mark 100 years since the battles at Fromelles and Pozieres.

“Looking at the flat battlefields I thought how hard it would have been for the soldiers,” Mitchell said.

“The impressive ceremonies with veterans and dignitaries were moving and emotional.”

Mitchell Price reads an extract from the diary of World War I digger Lieutenant Walter George Molyneaux Claridge at the Pozieres Centenary Commemoration.

At the Western Front Mitchell visited memorials for British, Australian, Canadian and German soldiers.

“Many of the memorials stand close to the trenches and mark the places where the soldiers fought heroic and ferocious battles.”

During the front line tour each student dressed in full World War I kit and experienced a day in the life of a soldier. Mitchell said he had always been interested in ancient history but the tour had inspired him to study modern history.

The Year 10 student said he wants to get into the air force.

For the scholarship trip Mitchell had to compete with students from 89 schools across NSW.

Mitchell Price at Memory Park, Penrith, after winning the Premier's award. Mitchell is wearing his grandfather and great grandfathers medals. Picture: Justin Sanson.