Battlefields trip evokes memories

Every year, girls in Year 9 visit the World War One battlefields of Flanders and the Somme, to remember those who died and to see at first hand the fields of battle and the memorials to the 6 million who died between 1914 and 1918.

 

This year, we were blessed with warm weather, which made it harder at times to imagine the conditions that soldiers were forced to endure.
While our base was near Ypres in Belgium, we also visited the Somme in northern France. There, we saw the huge crater at Lochnagar, near La Boiselle, caused by a 60,000 tons of gun cotton exploded under German trenches by the British to signal the start of the first Battle of the Somme, on 1 July, 1916.

We also visited Newfoundland Park, where the tiny Newfoundland regiment fought and died with the British in the Battle of the Somme. By the time we reached the majestic and arching Thiepval memorial to the missing, it was becoming clear how vast the losses were in the Battles around the Somme. Thiepval, designed by British architect Sir Edwyn Lutyens, has carved on it the names of 73,000 Commonwealth soldiers whose remains were never found. Symbolically, 400 British and French soldiers are also buried here, to signify the joint action that took place here. Some Channing girls located the names of relatives who died fighting on the Somme, while three girls read John McCrae’s poem In Flanders Field, while we laid a wreath and listened to the bird song as we held a minute’s silence.

 

Other highlights of the trip included the last post ceremony at Ypres and visiting two eerie and depressing cells at Poperinge, which have been renovated to show where condemned prisoners spent their last night before execution at dawn.

 

By Calyx Palmer, Year 9