Teesdale students have recently returned from an informative and emotional trip to the WW1 battlefields in Belgium and France.
The annual trip saw 40 Year 9 students visit historic sites of the western front including Tyne Cot and Langemark Cemeteries, and the trenches of Sanctuary Wood just outside Ypres.
The group also visited Wellington Quarry under Arras where British and New Zealand soldiers created a network of tunnels and an underground hospital close to the frontline, which is specifically referenced in their GCSE learning.
Student Kirsty McLachlan is the great, great granddaughter of Private Henry George Suffell of the Second Battalion Durham Light Infantry. As a thirty-four year old Darlington postman, Henry was called up in December 1916 when the army raised the age limit for recruits to strengthen the ranks that were decimated by the Somme offensive. Henry’s unit saw some of the fiercest fightings of the war and he was killed on 12 October 1918 with only a month of bloodshed remaining before the armistice was signed.
Kirsty proudly wore replicas of her great great grandfather’s medals as she, along with Thomas Brett (whose great, great grandfather also fell in the war) and Megan Dowson, laid a wreath at the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate in Ypres in front of over three hundred people.
Kirsty was inspired by her history lessons and family connection with WW1 to write a song about those left behind by the conflict. She was invited to perform the song at the National Memorial Arboretum in Birmingham and the composition was featured on a British Forces Broadcasting Services radio programme.
The chorus reads:
But promise me, when the war is done,
Whether your battle is lost or won,
Put one foot in front of the other,
Find your way back to me, find your way back to me.