Our annual First World War Battlefields tour party set off from School at the unseemly hour of 6am on Thursday 25th May.
Below are some photographs of the trip. Click on the photograph for a larger version
Surprisingly, all party members arrived on schedule, even Mr McGrath! We made good time on the way to Dover, catching an earlier than anticipated ferry, thus providing an opportunity to visit a site en route to our hotel in Arras, northern France. Our first visit took in the spectacular and humbling surroundings of the French National Cemetery at Notre Dame de Lorette. The Battle of Lorette lasted 12 months from October 1914 to October 1915 and claimed numerous victims. 100,000 people were killed and as many were wounded on both sides. The cemetery itself contains more than 20,000 individual tombs. There are eight ossuaries (the main one being at the bottom of the Lantern Tower) where the bones of 22,970 unknown soldiers have been gathered.
After sampling the delights of French cuisine on the first evening, an exhausted tour party retired to their rooms in preparation for Friday’s visit to the Ypres Salient. It soon became apparent that our trip to the battlefields would be as authentic as possible. The weather, almost constant rain, appeared rather reminiscent of the Battle of Passchendaele. The onset of heavy rain did not dampen our spirits, however, as we battled our way though Sanctuary Wood, Tyne Cot and Essex Farm amongst other sites. The futility and human cost of conflict was now beginning to dawn on all the tour party. Fittingly, we ended the day in remembrance at the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate.
The continued wind and rain did little to diminish our enthusiasm as we travelled to the Somme region, the scene of the blackest day in British military history on 1st July 1916. Nowhere is the story of that chilling day more vividly told than at Beaumont Hamel Memorial Park. Our Canadian guide told us that the Newfoundland Regiment saw its first engagement in the war on that fateful day – and it’s costliest of the whole war. This pattern was repeated across the front line as we discovered at Serre and Mametz. No visit to the Somme would be complete without seeing the impressive Thiepval Memorial. The Thiepval Memorial, the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, bears the names of more than 72,000 officers and men of the British 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. We laid a wreath in remembrance to the four old Birkonians who are commemorated on the memorial.
The sun made an appearance on our final day, just as we departed underground to visit the tunnels of Vimy Ridge. The great Canadian victory here in April 1917 witnessed the birth of a nation. The preserved trenches and an excellent visitors’ centre pay tribute to the heroic Canadian soldiers who performed so admirably in the war
It does not matter how many times one visits the sites of the First World War, they never fail to have an impact. Hopefully, this moving experience will stay with all boys for a long time to come.
