S Clare’s High School Taree student Galen Wiseman has been given an rare honour.
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The 17-year-old Air Force cadet is one of 15 from around the country chosen by the Australian Air Force Cadets (AAFC) to travel to France to attend the Anzac Day ceremony at the Australian War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux.
This year, Anzac Day also marks the the exact date of the 100 year anniversary of the second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux, making the occasion doubly significant.
“They’ll actually attend probably four services, and at Villers-Brettoneux four out of the 15 (cadets) will be selected to take part in the service,” Galen’s dad, Todd, said.
The trip to France will last two weeks, and will encompass what Todd, calls a “WWI Western Front tour”.
“We will basically start in Belgium and work our way through the cemeteries and the museums relating to the western front campaign,” he said.
While there, Galen and Todd wish to pay their respects to fallen soldiers from the Wingham and Upper Manning.
They had read about research the Manning Valley Historical Society is conducting relating to people from the Manning Valley who were involved in the Great War, so Todd contacted them requesting their help.
As a result, society volunteer Margaret Clark compiled a list of around 150 WWI soldiers buried in France. Margaret also supplied some background on some of the soldiers.
“One thing we have offered to do for the museum is, because they’ve given us the folder with all the locations of all the graves and memorials and some back stories of the individual people, we will attempt to photograph as many gravestones as we can find so they can add that to their records,” Todd said.
“Whilst it’s a fabulous lifetime experience, we’re making sure we can bring it back to some sort of local connection as well.”
The visit to the museum was a sobering one for Galen when they showed him their Boy Solider display.
“They were pointing out to Galen, ‘you’re 17 and the Boy Soldier just didn’t quite make his 17th birthday’. And they showed us some of the photos that they’ve got, and they were just kids,” Todd said.
Galen, a Cadet Sergeant with the 317 (City of Taree) Squadron, is looking forward to learning more about what serving in the Great War was like for the armed forces.
“To me it means being able to see what they actually did, how they did it and what it was actually like being a soldier in the war,” Galen said.