Year 9 Battlefields Trip
On Friday 28th May the whole of Year 9 went on a trip to the battlefields of the First World War. This is an account by Euan Brook of 9DB.
"The coach was quicker than we expected, making it to Dover in only a couple of hours. We boarded a ferry and crossed the Channel. We eventually reached Calais and set off once again, straight to Ypres in Belgium. The first place my group headed to was the Allied cemetery in Tyne Cot, where everything was brilliantly preserved with large white marble gravestones and huge memorials. But it was just too big, and everything was rather sad and depressing. I counted 164 graves in one row. One row! Everyone was searching for their names either on the large memorial walls or on the gravestones themselves. Most found them. There are nearly 13,000 soldiers buried in Tyne Cot and 70% have the words "Known unto God," inscribed on the gravestones, as no name was ever found for them.
We then visited the German cemetery in Langemark. This cemetery is very different to Tyne Cot. The Belgians haven't exactly worked hard to preserve it. The entrance has a large mass grave with at least 25,000 German servicemen inside and each gravestone is a slab of rock with at least 25 names on each. The entire area is enclosed and you can barely see what's inside from far off. At the end of the cemetery are four life-sized bronze statues of German soldiers in mourning, watching over the horizon, said to be watching over the fallen.
We then headed to Sanctuary Wood; there an entire trench layout has been preserved. There was also a huge collection of weapons, helmets, shells and ammunition, and huge holes in the ground where the bombardments had hit. And the trenches were still incredibly muddy, even after almost a hundred years!
Lastly we visited the town of Ypres and the Cloth Hall, which had been destroyed by the Germans in the Second Battle of Ypres. It was re-built by the Belgians to the original designs, and it does look magnificent, even today. There is now a museum built inside the Cloth Hall, with original equipment like gas masks and ammunition, extremely detailed models of the trenches, plus a huge map of Ypres in the bombardment. After leaving the museum we walked around Ypres and saw the huge Menin Gate, which had the names of each Allied soldier who died at Ypres, which was sadly a huge number.
It's sad how Langemark and Tyne Cot were so different. Tyne Cot was bigger, smarter, with each grave to each soldier, with a huge memorial in the centre. All in all 13,000 men are buried there. But in Langemark, the cemetery was smaller, trees had grown, making the place cold and dark. But even though the place is smaller, 44,000 men are buried there, with 25,000 in a mass grave. It shows what happens to the winners and the losers.
I would like to thank the teachers who took us on the trip. It was a fun day, but also sad, leaving Belgium with the knowledge of how many men died in those brutal years. It is an incredibly important trip. The ones who fell must be remembered."
Euan Brook, 9DB
Here are some more images from the day:
