From the 3 - 7 April, 39 students from Year 9 travelled to Belgium and France for a tour of the First World War battlefields.
The group stayed in Diksmuide in the Ypres salient, which saw some of the fiercest fighting in the first years of the war. In order to stop the German advance in 1914 the area was flooded and both sides entrenched ready for a conflict of attrition.
Students visited several battlefield cemeteries and a museum about the impact of the war on the local area. These included a cemetery at Essex Farm; an advanced dressing station where surgeon, John McRae, was inspired to write the famous poem In Flanders Fields.
Students also visited the Somme region of France, scene of some of the most horrifying industrial warfare ever witnessed. They saw the staggering Thiepval Memorial that bears the names of more than 72,000 officers and men of the United Kingdom and South African forces who died in the Somme sector before 20 March 1918 and have no known grave. Over 90% of those commemorated died between July and November 1916.
On the final evening of the trip four Teesdale students laid a wreath at the Menin Gate last post ceremony at Ypres. This was a special occasion for Ella Lee and Holly Teward in particular as both have relatives whose names are listed on the memorial to those who died defending the town from the enemy.
Holly’s Great Great Uncle Johnny Raper was killed at St. Julien on April 25th 1915. He was only 22 years old. Only a few weeks earlier he had married his childhood sweetheart and girl next door Florrie Glasper. Johnny’s best friend Tom Cant was with him when he died and he wrote a letter back from the front informing Johnny’s family of the tragic news.
Over four hundred people attended the Menin Gate ceremony, where Holly, Ella and two other students laid the wreath, including members of a Canadian regiment who were marking the 100th anniversary of the victory at Vimy Ridge. As dusk fell in Ypres the fallen were remembered with the famous words of Robert Lawrence Binyon,
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Students travelled home with a greater understanding of the sacrifice made by those who died in the terrible slaughter on the Western Front and with a sense of the responsibility that rests on their generation to ensure that such a conflict never occurs again.