WW1 Battlefields Trip


GCSE History pupils visited the Battle­fields of North­ern France and Belgium for 4 days at the begin­ning of October.

This allowed students to see not only the battle sites of the Somme and the Ypres Sali­ent, but also the tragic and argu­ably unne­ces­sary losses seen all too power­fully in the many cemeteries.

Daniel Lustig Bruce 11y, commen­ted; “On the battle­fields trip we visited trenches, battle­fields, war memori­als and the graves of hundreds of thou­sands of people. It was breath­tak­ing to see these graves span­ning across these huge fields going on and on. I suddenly under­stood the vast quant­it­ies of people that lost their lives in this war and it really showed me the reason we should buy a poppy and show respect”. Libby Whit­field 11x , wrote on her exper­i­ence; “In my next minute of silence, I will try to pay my respects and really under­stand what people went through, real­ising the fate of millions of people who fought for our country”.

In recent years many schools have organ­ised ‘Battle­field Tours’, some­times in order to celeb­rate victor­ies and glory;more often to wonder about and ques­tion the polit­ical decisions that could lead to such devast­a­tion and slaughter. Whatever the motiv­a­tion, being there is more poignant and more memor­able than seeing the sights on videos or pictures. As William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past” and older gener­a­tions need to teach the younger ones the truth about the past.

See slideshow below for more photos.