Students' crosses bound for France

Pictured with the flax crosses were, from left, Beau-Leah Karaitiana, 10, teacher Steve Hornby, Sophie Cusack, 10, and Kara McKay, 10. PHOTO/LYNDA FERINGA

Students at Solway Primary School have woven a hundred small crosses from harakeke flax that will soon grace the French graves of Kiwi soldiers who laid down their lives during WWI.

Teacher Steve Hornby said he and his class had woven the crosses at the request of Carterton woman Viv Walker, whose children were past pupils at the school.

Archivist Dolores Ho, from the Waiouru Army Museum, had founded the not-for-profit Dolores Cross Project as a scheme to pay tribute to new Zealand soldiers buried overseas.

The initiative sought out Kiwis to take the crosses if they were living or travelling near foreign cemeteries in which New Zealand soldiers were buried, and laying the small tribute on graves. Ms Walker was travelling to Nord and staying near the Fifteenth Ravine Cemetery in Viliers Plouich, and the Anneux British Cemetery.

"Dolores was a bit short of ready-made crosses and asked if I could make 140 to place on the graves of all the New Zealand soldiers in both cemeteries I was visiting," Ms Walker said.

She had woven 40 crosses and Mr Hornby's Kauri class made up the shortfall, Ms Walker said, for which she was grateful "especially at such short notice".

The Carterton RSA had donated poppies enough to place one of the small paper flowers in the centre of each cross.

Ms Walker said the cemeteries were close to the border of France and Belgium and not too distant from the village of Le Quesnoy, which New Zealand troops had liberated from four years of German occupation, a week before the end of WWI in November,1918.

Wairarapa soldiers had played a part in the capture of the village, Ms Walker said, and numerous lives were saved.

Mr Hornby found that buried in one of the cemeteries was a soldier named James Wylie, who had been the son of Alexander and Julia Wylie, of Masterton. He planned to personalise a tribute for Mr Wylie, he said.

"Today many streets in the village are named after New Zealand, like Place de All Blacks and Rue Nouvelle Zealande, in thanks to their courage and sacrifice," Ms Walker said.

The event also had been retold in a children's picture book titled Le Quesnoy - The Story of the Town New Zealand Saved.

Ms Walker believed it an honour to be delivering tributes to the graves of the 140 New Zealanders who did not return home.

"It will be a privilege to do this for many soldiers, who may never have been visited by anyone since being buried there."