"To all those who have established and are maintaining the right to refuse to kill". Students from Baradene College of the Sacred Heart from Auckland standing in front of the Conscientious Objectors Monument at Tavistock Square in London.

Students from Lycee Professionnel Jean Mace in Chauny and Baradene College of the Sacred Heart in Auckland, standing in front of the New Zealand War Memorial at Hyde Park Corner in London. A little wet from the rain but enjoying making friends on their first day together.

Our group about to board our plane for Europe. Everyone is very excited. 

Our group about to board our plane for Europe. Everyone is very excited. 

Today all of the students got to see the book. Everyone was excited to see the section they had written and to find thier name as an author at the back of the book. Our task today for the project was to post two copied to the National Library of New Zealand. This is called the "Legal Deposit" and is required under law in New Zealand when you get an ISBN number for the book. It means that two copies will be forever kept in the Bational Library for researchers to reference.

Photo of our book. Today we were able to get the book from the printing company.

The book cover has an image by a New Zealand artist John Z. Robinson. The image is a linocut print. The image is of Field Punishment No.1. This punishment was used to discipline soldiers and four of the New Zealand concientious objectors were also made to undergo this for periods of 28 days at a time. 

Another preview of our book. This time the pages show photos of Archibald Baxter and Mark Briggs (two conscientious objectors sent to the Western Front) and a great photo we sourced from Puke Ariki Museum of a NZ soldier on the duckboard at the front line. Briggs was dragged over this, the nails on it digging into his flesh and creating huge wounds. Baxter was marched to the front line in order to try to "break his will" to resist military service. In the end he got left there, and wandered...

The photo shows pages from our book that we are publishing as part of our Shared Histories Project. The book will be launched when we are in Chauny, France. The photo shows a section of the book written by the French students in Chauny who researched the execution of a group of soldiers in Vingré. These are known as the Martyrs of Vingré [Martyrs de Vingré]. The book is bilingual in French and English. 

Les Martyrs de Vingré sont six poilus, le caporal Paul Henry Floch et les soldats Jean...

Our final look at what our book will look like arrived form the printing company. We got to have a look at this and a final check of it. The French language section has a blue background now which makes the book look really good. Photo shows Dani and Rose looking at the book. 

Mr Gallop is our French language teacher who is coming on our trip to France. In the photo he is wearing the Trip Shirt that we have  all been given by the travel company "Defining Moments". It has the Shared History logo on the arm of the shirt and our school name, as well as the "silver fern", a national symbol of New Zealand.