"Forgotten" Irishmen who died in the first World War have been commemorated with a special badge designed by secondary students in a south Galway school.
Symbolic hands holding a helmet, a dove of peace and the four provinces are depicted in the badge which pupils from Gort Community School unveiled this week as part of One World Week and Armistice Day.
The badge was created to mark the loss of almost 70,000 young men from the island of Ireland who were killed, wounded or went missing – among over 140,500 who volunteered for military service between 1914 and 1918.
“Many of them were fighting due to poverty and many of them were under age,”the Gort students explain. “ For whatever reasons they went to the war, the common bond was that they were all volunteers.”
In designing the badge, the students explain that they decided against including the poppy as they felt it had been “over-used” by Britain. The word “Reverentia” is intended to “show respect to the many volunteers who were not shown this over the years”.
