The Abingdonian 2019

35 www.abingdon.org.uk Lent Term History Battlefields Trip The Battlefields trip lasted from Monday 15 April to Wednesday 17 April; we visited monuments, graveyards, preserved trenches, museums, from Ypres in Belgium to the Somme in France and many places in between. We began our trip with a visit to the Lijssenthoek cemetery. This cemetery holds 10,784 graves, three of which were women (two foreign labourers and a nurse). The site had a peaceful yet sobering feel as these were the graves of men who died trying to recover from their injuries or even diseases out in the trenches. Afterwards we headed over to Hill 62, a preserved trench system surrounded by shell holes. The first thought that comes to mind in that place is: “How on earth did millions of soldiers put up with such horrifying conditions for over four years?” Then it was on to the second cemetery, this one with 12,000 graves and the names of 35,000 soldiers whose bodies couldn’t be found, which coupled with the names on the Menin Gate, make 90,000 lost bodies. That evening, at the Menin Gate, we also saw a ceremony to honour the fallen. On Tuesday we started with the Somme which somehow only showed one piece of information proving that it was the Somme: a giant bomb crater at Hawthorn Ridge near an area known as the Sunken Lane. On the way to the Newfoundland memorial, we found a shell that hadn’t exploded. At the Newfoundland memorial was a statue of a female deer (Newfoundland’s most common breed of deer) calling its young. We then went to the Langemarck German Military Cemetery, which felt more grim compared to the others. We finished the day at the Thiepval memorial to the missing, which had 72,000 names and 600 graves, and the Ulster Tower; both of which had a peaceful sense about them. For the last day on the battlefields trip, we first visited the Neuve-Chapelle Indian Memorial which seemed somewhat less religious than all of the other memorials or cemeteries. Following that there was a trip to a Canadian memorial where the statues faced in the direction of the allied trenches, one of which was Lady Canada calling her people home from war. We then had the opportunity to go inside the tunnels dug out near the town of Arras before going through some preserved trenches at Vimy Ridge, which included mine craters. All of the memorials, regardless of their size, felt like they were acting as a warning of what happened when the world turned on itself and many were caught in the cross-fire. Other sites helped to expand our knowledge of these horrific events. It was a good trip and thanks go to Mr McGill, Mr Knowland, Mr Chase, Mr Jackson and Mr O’Doherty for accompanying us. Peter Harris, 3SJB