by LYNDSAY FREER
On Sunday, May 21, a large congregation of present and former students, friends, dignitaries and supporters gathered in the Sacred Heart College chapel in Auckland for their annual Anzac Commemoration Mass.
This year, it was with a difference, because of a special focus on 100 years since the Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium was fought, a battle in which a number of former Sacred Heart students lost their lives. The Belgian Honorary Consul, Dr Elizabeth Jacobs, was among those who laid a wreath in their memory.
Sacred Heart students sing alongside Sergeant Roy Kennedy (Photos: Br Anthony Walker, FMS)
Only a few weeks previously, 24 students and staff of the college visited Passchendaele, among other theatres of war, and were deeply moved as they visited New Zealand graves and those of many fallen soldiers. There were 13,000 Allied casualties at Passchendaele, including 3700 New Zealanders, 845 of whom had been killed or lay wounded and stranded in the mud between the lines. In terms of lives lost in a single day, October 12, 1917, was the blackest day in New Zealand’s modern history.
The path to the college chapel was lined with red poppies and white crosses representing Sacred Heart Old Boys who had lost their lives in service to their country.
In his reflection before Mass, Sacred Heart Principal Jim Dale recalled that they were gathered to remember the ultimate sacrifice made by 40 Old Boys of the college in the Great War and at the Battle of Passchendaele one hundred years ago this year.
“The toll was horrendous,” he said. “Hundreds of thousands who lie there in the fields of France and Belgium in different graveyards are Christian, Muslim, Orthodox, Jew, agnostics and unbelievers. Many bear no name, simply Known unto God”.
Members of the Defence Forces and Sacred Heart Old Boys laid candles and prayed for the deceased members of the Forces and the young men of the college who lost their lives at Gallipoli, France, Belgium, the Middle East, Mediterranean, Italy, Asia and the Pacific.
During the Mass, Fr Chris Skinner, SM, sang his own composition, “The road to Passchendaele”, and during the distribution of Communion, a moving hymn for Anzac Day by Carl Gibbons was sung by the college choir.
At the conclusion of Mass, the documentary of Sacred Heart Old Boys who died during the war, “Band of Brothers”, was screened, and all stood for The Last Post and the national anthems of Belgium and New Zealand.
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