Message from Mr Day for Parents & Carers of Y10 Battlefields Trip students:
At 2am on Thursday morning 39 History students arrived at Westbourne to set off for the Year 10 First World War battlefields trip to France and Belgium. After reaching a foggy Dover and enjoying a full English breakfast on the ferry, we headed to Newfoundland Park, a memorial to Newfoundland and Canadian soldiers killed on the Western Front. Students were able to walk through what remains of the trenches and shell holes of No Man’s Land and visit the Caribou statue which was built as a tribute to those who fought and lost their lives.
From there we went to Lochnager Crater, created by a large mine detonated beneath the German lines, by the British Army’s 179th Tunnelling Company Royal Engineers. It was said the noise from the explosion was so great that it could be heard in London.
Our final WW1 stop of the day was at the Thiepval Memorial, the largest on the Western Front, which bears the names of 72,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers who died in the Battles of the Somme, but have no known graves. The scale of the memorial allowed students to reflect on the sacrifice made and the horrors of war.
In the late afternoon we visited the town of Albert and at our hostel in the evening there were some impressive displays of basketball, table tennis and football from all involved. The trip continues on Friday and Saturday with visits to Tynecot and Langemark cemeteries, the underground tunnels in Arras, the Hooge World War One Museum and the Menin Gate in the town of Ypres.
