There are 11 rows of 10 crosses.

‘59922 Pte. H.W.Kirk' read the inscription just below the image of a poppy on one cross. ‘419043 L/Cpl J.V.H. Bellars' read another.

One hundred and ten crosses all told, and 110 young men who did not return home to Tauranga from WW1. Some 110 lives lost. Sons, brothers, lovers. Killed.

24/482 Cpl. S.C.Jordan, 84744 Pte. W.M,Tapsell and many many more.

'Crazy” says 14-year-old Leah Bentz of form 9BLL at Tauranga Girls College. 'They were young men. Not much older than my brother Cameron going away to fight. And not coming home. That's very upsetting.”

Leah's standing looking over a sea of crosses pondering the concept of war and death. One hundred and ten crosses which she has just helped erect as a field of remembrance right outside the front doors of Tauranga Girls College on Cameron Road. When the girls go to school they now stop, remember, and be grateful.

Very grateful to young men like Engineer S.Tanner and 13/302 L/Cpl G.R.Bettleheim, killed in action.

'The sacrifices they made enabled us to do this. We can look up to them.” The crosses have also changed her understanding.

'I always thought it was older men going out to fight. But many were teens, not much older than me going away and not coming home. It would have been a very scary time.”

The girls' woodwork class made the crosses, the art girls painted them, the social studies class researched the names, ages and ranks of the soldiers and Leah Bentz's math class scoped the layout of the remembrance and laying the grid with string. One hundred and ten crosses, one metre apart and all in military straight lines, no matter what angle they are gazed upon.

'Not as easy as you might think,” says Leah. 'We spent a couple of days figuring it.”

Our own little slice of Tyne Cot on Cameron Road – Tyne Cot being an historic site from the Battle of Passchendaele and the war graves cemetery where 520 New Zealand soldiers lie buried amongst 12,000 symmetrically placed headstones.

Passchendaele has almost become a byword for slaughter and New Zealand's darkest day, New Zealand's greatest military disaster. On October 12, 1917 – almost 100 years to the day – 845 Kiwi soldiers were snuffed out in just 24 hours as they advanced on German defences through a quagmire of liquid mud and barbed wire.

Gone but not forgotten at Tauranga Girls' College.