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Monday, January 5, 2009 |
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EDUCATION: Thirty students from Woodstock's Huron Park secondary school visited the battle site in Italy
High school trip to Ortona brings research to life
They left with research, facts and figures about a battle that took place thousands of kilometres away and decades ago.
The journey to Ortona, Italy, was as far from Woodstock as most of the Huron Park secondary school students had ever gone. "It was kind of like a big rush of emotion, after all this time, seeing all the people standing together and supporting the soldiers," said Deirdre Varga, 16, one of 30 students from the school to make the journey. "When we were in Monte Casino, there was one grave for a soldier who was 18. I put my flag there," Varga said. "A lot of soldiers lied about their ages, so even if it said 18, who knows how old they really were. He could have been younger." The trip was part of a remembrance journey for 2,000 students from across Canada who congregated in Italy for the 65th anniversary of the Second World War's Battle of Ortona. Students also went to England and France. Huron Park was one of several schools from the London region to participate. "Seeing the village itself was amazing. There were walls that still had bullet holes from the war," Varga said. Each student researched a local soldier before they left Canada and then visited the grave at a cemetery near Ortona where more than 1,300 Canadians are buried. "When everyone stood at the soldiers' graves, it was really moving just to see how many people there were," said Sydney Olivera, 16. Chelsey Ryder, 16, said what she'd been learning about for many months "didn't sink in" until she stood at the graves. Kate Dubinski is a Free Press reporter.
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E-MAIL: Kate Dubinski