A WAR widow has blasted a York school for laying a wreath at a German military cemetery.

Ida Goodrick, of Tadcaster, condemned the gesture as a "misguided and unpatriotic act of honouring our enemy."

The 88-year-old great-grandmother wrote to Millthorpe School to vent her fury after reading about the wreath in the Evening Press.

It was laid by staff and Year Ten pupils at Millthorpe on a recent visit to First World War battlefields at Ypres, where thousands of British soldiers were killed.

The cemetery is where more than 44,000 German soldiers were buried.

The school today apologised to Mrs Goodrick for any distress and pain their actions had caused her.

In her letter, Mrs Goodrick said: "I am a still-grieving war widow whose husband was mown down by a German Panzer division in the Normandy landings in June, 1944."

The former Bass brewery worker said her husband, Alfred, had been 35 when he was killed, leaving her with a two-year-old son.

Speaking at her home, in Woodlands Avenue, Tadcaster, she said: "I think the wreath-laying was astonishing and highly insensitive. Political correctness in this country has gone mad - they don't think how men like my husband gave their lives to save this country and its freedom.

"There is steel in my heart still towards the Germans. I will never forgive or forget. His death ruined our lives.

"We wanted more children, and when I look back and think about what we have all missed, I could weep.

"I'm so bitter I can't even bear to go over to France to visit his grave."

Millthorpe School headteacher Peter Whitcomb has written to Mrs Goodrick to apologise.

He said: "Our aim both in the visit and in our history teaching is not to condone war or any of the atrocities.

"The laying of the wreath - also accompanied by the laying of a wreath at an Allied Forces' cemetery - was to try to engender a feeling of reconciliation in the new generation."

Updated: 12:51 Saturday, June 29, 2002