WWI Battlefields

Across the October break, the History Department took almost 80 pupils to visit the battlefields on the former Western Front of the First World War.

In an immersive experience, pupils learnt about the conditions for Allied and German soldiers. Visiting significant sites in the Somme, France to appreciate the challenges faced by both sides and to learn more about the efforts to break through the deadlock of trench warfare.

In Belgium, pupils visited key cemeteries and discovered the different ways different nationalities remembered their war dead. A wreath was laid at the Last Post Ceremony at the Menin Gate in Ypres on behalf of the entire school community. In connection with the trip, the History Department ran photography and reflective writing competitions.

The photography competition was won by Leo (S3), whose image of a calm, misty morning offered a stark juxtaposition to the experiences of those involved in the war. Emma (S3) won the reflective writing competition with a thoughtful piece about how the trip put into perspective things we complain about today. Congratulations to both competition winners for finding a different way to sum up what gave all the pupils, and the staff that accompanied them, much to ponder.

Our Trip to Belgium, Their ‘Trip’ to Belgium By Emma Macleod

October 2023, laughing, smiling, immature teens coming from home and seeing the hills we can roll down, the fields we can race across in the mud while laughing. The warm bus where we can complain about how cold it was outside, to our happy friend in the puffer jacket and the hot meals we enjoy before we go to our comfy beds and gossip with our friends, having fun, enjoying the holidays, and resenting the thought of going back to school.

I then imagined myself, as a young soldier, perhaps just a few years older than me in July 1916: laughing, smiling, immature coming from home, excited, hopeful and brave. Suddenly seeing the hills that will shield me from bullets, the fields I must race across in the mud while seeing my friends collapse from enemy bullets and the food that we must gulp down while fearing the shells that drop around us in our miserable, damp, home. Here there is no warm bus, comfy beds or friends who will always stay with us. The friends I have known since childhood are now perched inside our dugout silent, shaking, and dead inside. I begin to wish I was back at school (yes, the one where we were ridiculed constantly by our peers and beaten by our teachers at the slightest misdemeanour) even that seems so far from reach.

I imagine opening my pouch and staring at my hard dog biscuit, in the beginning I was brave, fierce, determined and felt indestructible but with a whole load of water, death and fear I’m now a fragile mush that no one cares for, who could be killed easily and just as easily forgotten. Maybe it is better to be dead than survive one more day here because even if I make it home, life will never be the same, I’ve seen too much and have been through too much to be able to live happily again. No longer the immature teenager that had come to this place, but a representation of the devastating effects of war.

When we return to 2023, we must think – is a long coach journey, an overpriced ferry latte or a forgotten phone charger really that big of a deal? Have they ever been our biggest problems? Because at the end of the day we came back to our families safe and sound, filled with laughter, memories, and tummies full of sweets. Whereas many young men only a century prior came on their ‘trip’ full of valour and pride for their country only to never return home and spend the rest of eternity in a foreign land where they may only be ‘known unto god’ or recognised simply as a ‘soldier of the great war.’

With just a moments reflection and remembrance then I understand how to view things with perspective.