Despite rather gloomy weather and the late arrival of buses, eight-six JAGS girls from Year 9 and eight members of staff set off for France and Belgium on Tuesday 26^th June in high spirits. Having studied the First World War, the girls were anxious to see the cemeteries and memorials which remain there as a permanent reminder of the true cost of war. After a rather choppy crossing of The Channel, first stop was Notre Dame de Lorette, Artois. For many pupils, seeing the 20,000 individual tombs was a sobering and moving experience, especially when combined with the fact that there are also eight ossuaries, containing the bones of over 22,000 unknown soldiers. En route to Lijssenthoek Cemetery, we saw the Indian Memorial which emphasised the fact that World War One was a truly global war in which so many nationalities paid the ultimate sacrifice.

On Day two of the trip we visited Sanctuary Wood Museum with its preserved trenches as well as Tyne Cot cemetery, the largest Commonwealth War Cemetery in the world. The girls were able to wander around the headstones, read tributes from relatives of the dead, as well as looking at the vast memorial to the missing where the names of almost 35,000 are listed. The nearby Langemarck German Military Cemetery provided a stark contrast and the girls were reminded of the scale of losses on both sides. In Ypres the girls were able to visit the Flanders’ Fields’ Museum as well as attending the Last Post Ceremony at the Menin Gate. On the final day we visited the area around the Somme, including the Thiepval Memorial, where pupils and staff were able to find the names of family members who died there and whose bodies were never recovered. The pupils were taken aback by the sheer numbers killed and having studied the Battle of The Somme in detail earlier in the year, were able to see a glimpse of the reality. This had also been emphasised by our trip to the Lochnagar Crater earlier in the day. At Newfoundland Park, we were given an excellent guided tour which also showed the girls the logistics of the battle and how many lives were sacrificed to gain such a small area of land. The girls were given an opportunity to write their thoughts and recollections about the trip and these certainly demonstrated how much they had been touched by what they had seen. One example, a poem by Alex Wilson is shown below:

KNOWN UNTO GOD

They are lost,
Those who have fought and died.
Lost to them that love them,
Their names are ranked on walls and stones
Row on row
Known unto God.

Where do they lie?
our loved and lost -
Deep under blank earth and grass
The skylarks’ song cannot find its way
into their hollow ears
Stoppered by weight of dirt and years.

The guns are long silent
So are their voices
Their mouths are filled by dirt and worms
White stones proclaim their glory
A soldier of the Great War
Known unto God.