Warboys

By: Ex Students of Cambridge High School
Location: In Cemeteries all over Europe
Genre: World War One


I have been quiet on the blog this week, I have been working  hard on the display for next term in our library. In New Zealand we soon celebrate ANZAC day, it is a day where we reflect and remember about our fallen dead from the wars we have been part off. With 100 years since the beginning of WWI I thought it would be good to find out about the boys who went to our school, but fought on foreign soil and died there, never to come home.
It has been a sobering week. 32 young men, full of dreams and hopes yet never had the chance to fulfill them. Instead sent to  a place of hell, mud, cold, injuries, screams,  a place of unimaginable degradation, a place of hopelessness, a place of slaughter. Why- why did these young men have to die? I get it for WWII, there was a despot to fight against, but WWI- really, did these lives need to be wasted. I asked my year 12 students- why did we go to WWI- they have no idea- none. The boys sitting in my office right now, are 17, one wants to direct Brandon Sanderson movies, the other a Concept Artist- 100 years ago these boys dreams would have died with them on the fields of the poppies of Europe. Such a waste!
What is painful, is these young men I have worked with all week, collated their photos read their stories are the age of my sons. Young men, full of life, laughter, young love, amazing careers, crazy hobbies and constantly trying to bet me in hockey- which they never will.
O how the hearts of mothers must have broken, and the dreams of those young brides been utterly shattered. William Nevin Bell is pictured here, he died at Ypres aged 19, he attended our school.
Young fallen men of Cambridge High, we salute you, we remember you, we honor you and this week as I have got to know you, I am filled with a deep sadness!