But although not in the official party, the students were invited to march behind the veterans and invited to stand with the VIPs at the Commonwealth ceremony, Ms Tipene said.
"The Italians came and said 'we want those boys in here'."
It was a further honour when the group was asked to perform a haka for Prince Harry.
"They could very easily have been lost in the pomp and ceremony but they've been right there and included in everything," Ms Tipene said. "We're very proud of them."
Attending the Commonwealth Ceremony and visiting key locations had moved the young men from Northland, but the commemoration at the Cassino Railway Station where the original A Company had fought, and hearing Kiwi veterans recall their experiences there, had the biggest impact on them, Ms Tipene said.
Most have family links to soldiers who fought, many of whom died, in the campaign in 1944 when Allied forces tried to budge German forces from the strategically important rocky outcrop, home to a 1400-year-old Benedictine monastery.
The Battalion suffered the highest losses of any Allied force at Monte Cassino, with 120 casualties out of the 200 Maori soldiers, 58 of them buried there in the war cemetery among more than 400 New Zealanders.
The boys walked past and acknowledged every New Zealander buried in that cemetery, and laid poppies on the graves of the brother of surviving A Company soldier Sol Te Whata, of Moerewa, and the Unknown New Zealand soldier.
