For Shaye Davies, it is the personal stories of the war that interest her, not the facts.
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It's the stories of the hundreds of soldiers who lost their lives, their mates who kept fighting and their families at home.
And when the 16-year-old Launceston Church Grammar School student leaves for France next Wednesday, she hopes to learn more of those stories.
Shaye is one of six Tasmanians to win the Frank MacDonald Memorial Prize and will travel to France and Belgium.
There, she, the other students and accompanying teacher will attend the Anzac Day dawn service and visit Amiens, French Flanders, Arras and Ypres.
The service will be held at Villers Bretonneux, the Australian National First World War Memorial.
''I've never been to such a big Anzac Day event and it will be good to be part of it,'' Shaye said.
The statewide Frank MacDonald Memorial competition asked grade 9 students to submit a 1000-word essay or an audio-visual presentation on one of two questions fostering the Anzac spirit. Shaye's prize-winning essay was based on old letters she found written by a former Grammar boy about the war.
''I read through all those and then did my essay about his stories,'' she said.
Other students who won were Luke Dimsey, of Clarence High, Jarrah Day, of Taroona High, Alexandra Fuller, of Penguin High, Dean Mainwaring, of Ulverstone High, and Joseph Short, of Rose Bay High.
