First World War Battlefields

29th June - 2nd July 2009

On the 29th June 2009, a group of Year 10 pupils travelled to Ypres in Belgium and the Somme in France to visit the First World War Battlefields. On arrival in Ypres, Belgium, we visited Sanctuary Wood Cemetery. Sanctuary Wood is a commonwealth war cemetery in memory of the commonwealth soldiers, mainly Canadian, who took sanctuary in the near by woods during the Battle of Ypres in 1915. In the evening we attended the last post ceremony at the Menin Gate memorial, which has been held every day since 1929. The Menin Gate commemorates those soldiers whose bodies are still missing. The last post is played and wreathes are laid every evening at 8pm. The English Cricket team had recently visited and laid wreathes in memory of those soldiers. Our pupils were especially interested in the number of soldiers from the Kings Liverpool Regiment whose bodies are still missing. Throughout the ceremony they were a credit to Childwall Sports College.

On day two, we visited Flanders Field Museum, situated in the rebuilt Cloth Hall that was destroyed during the German bombardments in 1915. Whilst in the museum, pupils they tracked the wartime career of an individual and discovered what happened to them. We then explored the town of Ypres which had been completely rebuilt after the destruction caused by the war. We stopped at an exquisite Belgium chocolate shop and patisserie, where pupils feasted on a variety of Belgian chocolates.

We visited Essex Farm Field Dressing station, which was used with its concrete dug outs to treat casualties from the front lines. Essex Farm is where John McRae, a Canadian Medical Officer wrote the now famous poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ and also where the youngest recorded British soldier is buried. Then we drove to Langemark, a German military cemetery in order to show the contrast in remembrance of the victors and the defeated.

We then travelled to the Somme in France, where we visited the Trench Museum in Albert and Thiepval Memorial. The Thiepval Memorial is a magnificent memorial inscribed with the names of 73,357 British and South African men who have no known grave and who fell on the Somme between July 1916 and 20 March 1918. Behind the memorial are the graves of 300 French and 300 British soldiers to commemorate the joint Anglo-French Somme action, French burials on the left and British on the right.

The following day we spent at Disneyland Paris and in the evening we cruised the River Seine and had dinner at a restaurant overlooking the Arc de Triomphe. We also explored the area of Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur.

Overall, pupils were a credit to Childwall Sports College. They conducted themselves in an extremely mature manner throughout the trip.