Military History | École Victoria, Villers-Bretonneux — The School Somebody Else's Children Paid For

The boys' school here went down in April 1918, when the town changed hands twice in two days. What replaced it was paid for from the other side of the world.

A granite obelisk stands on the pavement outside the long school building, and its four faces date the rebuilding in stages. One records a visit by W. M. Hughes, the Australian prime minister, on 25 August 1921. Another marks the first stone, laid on 16 June 1923 by Frank Tate, Victoria's Director of Education, with the state's Agent-General Sir J. MacWhae. A third credits the work to the initiative of LT. COL. C.V. WATSON D.S.O. and to the gift of the schoolchildren of the State of Victoria; no account consulted here explains his part in it. The fourth gives the opening — 25 May 1927, by M. Tardieu, French minister of public works and liberated regions, and Sir George Fairbairn, Victoria's Agent-General. Australian accounts put the opening on Anzac Day that year instead. The obelisk itself was inaugurated in 1977.

Public Record Office Victoria records a penny drive in Victoria's schools and 12,000 pounds from the state Education Department to the War Relief Fund.

The dedication is lettered across the facade, with VICTORIA, VILLERS-BRETONNEUX and DOUZE CENTS picked out in red. It calls the school the gift of the children of Victoria's schools to the children of Villers-Bretonneux, and says twelve hundred Australian soldiers, the fathers and brothers of those children, gave their lives retaking the town from "l'envahisseur" on 24 April 1918. The obelisk dates the same action to the 25th.

Over the playground, in green on yellow: DO NOT FORGET AUSTRALIA. The Australian War Memorial records the French line above the blackboards.

It is still a working primary school. The upper floor has held a museum since 25 April 1975, and in February 2020, with fires burning across Australia, the town raised money for firefighters at Robinvale and for a Bega Valley relief fund; the Canberra Times put the total above $37,000.

📸 Cover: the obelisk on rue Victoria outside the school, a wreath at its foot. Second image: the dedication lettered across the school facade. Third image: the museum entrance, with the older ANZAC MUSEUM / MUSÉE DU SOUVENIR AUSTRALIEN plate beside the door. All Ybroc, 16 October 2018, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.