Trip to the Battlefields of the Somme
The Fourth Form enjoyed a very interesting trip to the battlefields of the Somme. Read Aidan H's (4ths) account of the trip.
writes Aidan H. (Fourths)
We left 西施直播' at about 2pm on Thursday, making good time on the way to Dover, where we boarded the ferry and enjoyed a smooth trip to Calais. Upon arrival on French soil, we boarded the bus once again, and arrived at the youth hostel just after midnight.
We woke up early the next morning, and drove to our first stop in Devonshire Cemetary, which overlooked where the front lines were dug in on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. We then moved on to the Ulster Tower, where we had a guided tour and learned about the 36th Ulster Division. The tour guide showed us key locations from the battlefields of this northern Irish division, and after, we visited the cemetery. After we moved towards the Mill Road cemetery to visit the grave of Geoffrey Ward OMT, who felt such a strong affinity to the school that he had the school song engraved on his headstone. After a visit to the monument to the 73,000 missing soldiers at Thiepval, we walked to Lonsdale cemetery, where Frederick Arnaud, OMT lays. We read his letter to his parents, and laid a poppy wreath at his grave, and observed an emotional two-minute silence. We then went to Lochnagar Crater, where the allies had tunnelled over 600 metres under no man鈥檚 land to lay 60,000 pounds of explosive under the German trenches. The crater was over 40 metres deep, showing the true force of these explosives. After a brief visit to a German cemetery at Fricourt, we went back to the hostel after this, enjoying a nice meal and a fun quiz night before going to bed.
The next morning, we had breakfast packed our bags and got on the bus to tour more battlefields. We visited Mametz Wood, where the 38th Welsh Division endeavoured and eventually succeeded in taking this ground from the Germans, at a high cost. We then moved on to Newfoundland Memorial Park, Beaumont Hamel, where a Newfoundland Division (now part of Canada) attempted to take the German front line. The original trenches were still there, and it was very eye opening to walk through them, and across the very no man鈥檚 land that they did.
For the last location, we walked to the sunken road, where the most famous pals battalion, the Lancashire Fusiliers, had crouched at 7.20am on the morning before going over the top. On this walk across the fields of the French countryside, we saw a live shell, proving the teachers right about the number of shells still being raked up 110 years later. This was a very interesting and enjoyable trip. Thank you to Mr. Hale, Mr. Manley, and Dr Hesketh for accompanying us on the trip. A special thank you too to Mr. Taylor, for being such a wonderful guide on his last school trip to the Somme before retirement.
