Year 8 Battlefields Trip
We all met outside school to a welcome of the dawn chorus and at 4.30am we boarded the coach and headed for the ferry port of Dover. Following a smooth crossing of the English Channel, we travelled through France and into Belgium to Tyne Cot, the largest British and Commonwealth cemetery. We spent time searching for long lost relatives who travelled here 100 years ago but never returned. Mr Leybourne read the last post poem.
We then visited the German Langemark cemetery, which was very different from Tyne Cot in that it was
covered with trees and felt somewhat cooler. We then made our way to Essex Farm cemetery where the
youngest British Tommy was buried, rifleman Valentine Joe Strudwick who died at the age of 15.
We returned to Ypres to visit the Flanders Field Museum and to liberate some Belgium chocolate and then it
was off to Calais for our ferry home. A very long but worthwhile and memorable day.