Battlefield Trip

October 22nd, 2015 – Chester, England

What a tiring day!

To start off, I had to get up ESPECIALLY early to leave (3:30am) to get to school by 4:30am to leave school. This was really annoying because just the day before are school started its break and this was our first day off, and I STILL got no sleep. Despite this I was still very excited to be able to go on such a cool trip. Our family has never been on a WW1 trip (only D-Day 2 years ago, which was WW2), and this trip is especially relevant as its WW1’s centenary and I’m also currently learning WW1 as part of my GCSE’s (EU tests that occur in 10th grade but children begin to prepare for in grade 9), so this trip was really something special for me. After I got at school and said all of my final farewells to Dad who dropped me off, I hoped right onto the bus. I’ve included a picture of the bus so you can see what it looks like.

 The bus was “double decker” (all it really was was higher seating with 5 seats on the lower level next to the driver) and I sat on the top (really was no choice) near the middle so I had a good view of the outside, but so I was still close enough to the onboard TV’s where they promised to show videos during the longer periods of driving. I got on and was amazed to see they had these overhead blue lights, I thought these were pretty cool and thought nothing of them. These would later come to bite me as you will see. As I sat down I made sure to “accidently” put my backpack on the seat next to me and to make it seem as though I had a lot of hand luggage to stop anyone from sitting next to me. This plan worked excellently and as the bus took off, I spread my objects around me to insure maximum comfort while I spread across 2 seats. I then tried to ease myself to sleep. It was then that I was struck by the blue lights for the first time. I just couldn’t sleep with the blue lights on. I tossed and turned for about ten minutes until I resolved to put a coat over my face to block out the blue lights. This ended up working and I finally got some sleep. I slept for the next 3.5 hours or so and I woke as we were pulling into a service station off the highway. The staff gave us 45 minutes to spend in the station eating and generally relaxing and taking a break from the bus. I got myself a BLT sandwich, a 2 liter bottle of water and a big pack of Doritos. I instantly ate the BLT it was pretty large so filled me up pretty well and I then saved the pack of Doritos for later in the trip to snack on. We then got back onto the bus and sped away to the south of England and when we got there to the “Chunnel” we were all awake and up. During this time I had read and listened to music on the way down. I was very excited to see the Chunnel as I knew of it and was pretty excited to see what it was like. In case you don’t know, the Chunnel is an underground tunnel that goes underwater from the south of England to France on the other side. The tunnel works by having a huge train pull up and cars and buses (not public) will drive onto the train and it will speed away. Inside your carriages, huge metal doors come down to stop the spread of any possible collisions or anything like that.

        We got to the tunnel at 12:00pm and arrived out at the other side in France at about 12:35pm, on the train you could leave your bus or car, and go to the bathroom, but the train didn’t have anything like shops aboard. The bus itself got really hot while in the train (95 degrees) and as we were all suited up for the cold England and France we were all boiling so most of us stayed outside of the bus until we had to get back on again. When we arrived in France we drove for another 2.5 hours until we came to another highway service station and we got off for another half an hour to get some lunch. I had some French chicken sandwich with mayonnaise I think (it was in French so don’t really know what I actually had) and it tasted pretty good. We then carried onto our first stop of the trip at the Maroeuil British CWGC (Commonwealth War Graves Commission) Cemetery, in Arras. Here we laid a wreath to commemorate a former pupil of the school that died in WW1. Lots of these graves are in the middle of no-where and this in turn gives them a really peaceful feeling.

 

After this stop we then continued onto another cemetery, the Queant Communal British Extension CWGC Cemetery. Here we again placed a wreath for an old pupil who had also died in the war.It was now 5:45pm and we headed for our accommodation for the next 2 nights. This was located in the city of Albert, and our school had a floor, and a different school had another floor. The Wi-Fi in this place was horrendous and we couldn’t connect to even check the news. But the overall accommodation was ok as we had comfy beds, lots of room as well as a game room where we could spend time chilling. We put all of our stuff in our rooms and got ourselves situated and at 8pm we went out to eat at a nearby restaurant.

       

They served us all the same chicken meal. Now, the chicken was severely undercooked and tasted horrible, and those that did eat it (me not being one of them) later in the week had food poisoning. Luckily I didn’t eat it. Phew! We finally got to bed at 10:30 that night, after a VERY long day.

October 23rd, 2015- Albert, France

        We were woke up by staff at around 7:00am and got dressed, took showers, etc., before going downstairs to eat breakfast at around 7:30am. They were serving a continental breakfast, so I just had some toast and a bowl of cereal. We then departed the hotel to walk to the nearby Somme 1916 Shelter Museum. At this museum, they have converted the tunnels that ran under the city and church into a museum that convers the topic of the Somme. They had interesting accounts from the soldiers, as well as their weapons uniforms and also had many mannequins to show off what life was like to live in one of the grimy trenches. At the end of the museum they had a gift shop where I bought a used shell from the war.

After the museum we then continued onto the Ring of Remembrance. The Ring of Remembrance was built in 2014 and contains over 580,000 names of men and women who died in the north of France in the First World War. 12 former pupils from my school who died in the First World War are commemorated on this. Also, I found some Heller’s as the Ring named the people in alphabetical order. I later looked them up but they had no relations to the family. Opposite the Ring of Remembrance was the Notre Dame de Lorette French National Cemetery. We then visited this which was the largest French military cemetery in the world containing over 40,000 men.

After visiting the cemetery, we then continued onto the city of Arras where we were allowed to go out by ourselves to get ourselves something to eat in the 1.5 hours we had. Me and my friends got some Pizza in a nice restaurant and then got back onto the bus to leave to go to the Wellington Quarry Tunnels, where in WW1 troops had dug connecting tunnels in the already existing quarry to position themselves to “pop” out of the ground in the middle of no man’s land and surprise the Germans. We were able to walk through the tunnels and it was very chilling as they showed us the place where the night before they left the tunnels they had a prayer ceremony and how they carved some of their last words into the surrounding stone.

       

After the tunnels, we went back onto our bus and traveled over to the Mory Abbey CWBC Cemetery were again a former pupil is buried. We then continued on to a nearby Café to grab some drinks and light snacks before we would go on to our next cemetery. Here there was a very well decorated pupil who had been killed who had even won the military cross.

We then finally headed back home from a very mellow and depressing day where we packed our bags before heading out again to get some supper at a nearby restaurant, and instead of following our plan we headed to a different restaurant, after the failure of the other restaurant’s food. Here we had spaghetti which tasted pretty good. After which we got to bed again.

October 24th, 2015- Ieper, Belgium

        We got up earlier at 6:30 and stripped all of our beds and got ready before going downstairs for some more breakfast which included the extravagant toast and a bowl of cereal. We then left for Villers-Bretonneux CWGC Cemetery Memorial which is an Australian national memorial. I got some really nice pictures here.

After this we went to another cemetery where a former history teacher from the school is buried, after which we went to a café to grab some light snacks and drinks and we then continued onto Serre to see where the first attacks in the Battle of the Somme took place. This place was very sobering because this was where many ‘Pals battalions’ were absolutely decimated. ‘Pals Battalions’ were battalions that were made up of everyone from the same community, so everyone who went to the same school would all join up at the same time, as well as everyone from the same sport team, and everyone from the local drama club, and so on. As these battalions were the first ones out at the battle of the Somme they were absolutely destroyed leaving the towns and cities that they came from absolutely destroyed by the loss of so many people at the same time. This is the very spot where the soldiers went ‘over the top’ and were all mowed down by German machine guns.

Here is the memorial to those men.

After Serre we then moved onto the large Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, which commemorates the names of 75,000 soldiers from the Battle of the Somme whose bodies were not found. On this there are 5 old pupils that are commemorated.

 

The scaffolding takes away some of the beauty of my photo here.

After Thiepval, we moved onto the Lochnagar Mine Crater, which is a huge crater from many mines underground that were remotely set off at the start of the Battle of the Somme. It’s difficult to get a picture of the crater so here’s one I’ve got from the internet.

I’ve also included the film footage of when the original mine blew.

                We then proceeded onto the Historial de la Grande Guerre which is a really interesting museum on the First World War showing off all kinds of equipment of both the soldiers and the civilians. After this we went to our accommodation for the next 2 nights which was actually ran by the same people as the one before. Here they Wi-Fi throughout the building but the rooms were horrible, having only one outlet per room (this isn’t enough when everyone needs to charge their devices and when there is 6 of us in a room this is even more of a problem. Also, we had some of the loudest people on the whole trip above us so that made the experience even less enjoyable. That night we had burgers at a nearby restaurant which tasted very pleasant. Then we got some needed shut-eye.

October 25th, 2015- Ieper, Belgium

We got up at 6:00 again and lo and behold I had a bowl of cereal and a slice of toast, we then made our first visit of the trip to Larch Wood Railway Cutting CWGC Cemetery where again a former pupil is buried. Departing, we started off again going to the Hooge Crater Museum where they had many relics of the war on display.

       

        We also had a brief stop here for some drinks and light snacks, after which we went to the Vladslo German war Cemetery which was our first and only German cemetery of the trip. The horrible thing about these graves were that not only were there over 500 individual grave stones, but that each stone held the names of 20 people on each stone.

After this we continued to The Trench of Death, which are a set of preserved trenches in Belgium and in case you’re wondering the trench got its name by the soldiers who were stuck in the trenches, waiting for reinforcements, got so desperate for the bodies to be buried as the reinforcements weren’t due for another 4 days, buried the bodies in the trenches themselves.

     

Right next to the trench was a post which marked the farthest the Germans had ever got, but in WW2 the writing that was inscribed on the post was rubbed off by Nazi soldiers commissioned to get rid of any anti-Germany text. Nearby, a farmer had a similar post of the same purpose next to his house and when he heard about what was going on to other posts, he covered his up with hay and the Germans never found it. Here is a picture of the post with its text rubbed off.

       

We then were given an hour to spend in the city which me and my friend spent eating a fancy Belgium waffle (I mean its Belgium so it’s obvious to eat a waffle) and then we just walked around taking photos and just generally experiencing the culture of Ypres. After this we walked back to the hotel to get ready for the night out. Here are some of the photos that I took.

After spending some time in our rooms getting ready, we all left and saw the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate. The Last Post ceremony, starting in 1927, has never failed to happen, even during WW2 were it was done in hidden locations, not necessarily at the Menin Gate. This was very touching as there was then a ceremony where people would put a wreath on the mantel piece to show respect for their dead. We laid 4 wreaths as 4 former pupils are commemorated on this. The Menin Gate commemorates the soldiers whose bodies couldn’t be found after the Battle of Ypres. We then went out to the same restaurant as the night before and this time had a traditional Flemish soup, which I thought tasted excellent. We then went to bed at 11:30.

October 26th, 2015- Chester, England

        We woke up again at 6:00 and guess what? I had a bowl of cereal and a slice of toast for breakfast. We then packed up our belongings ready to go back home. In the morning we had a proper look at the Menin Gate and paid our own respects to our former pupils.

We then moved onto our final cemetery of the trip, the Dozinghem Military CWGC Cemetery, which in the war served as a nursing station and those that didn’t live were buried next to the station. Here we again commemorated the death of a former pupil and then continued forward to the old Shooting Post and Cells, were rebellious soldiers were shot at dawn by a firing squad for acts such as deserting in the face of action. We then carried onto a more joyous topic of the Talbot House, where the soldiers relaxed and where daily shows where put on to entertain the battle-worn soldiers. From here we carried onto Chester where we would disembark at around 10pm that night, but on the way we watched the classic British comedy show ‘Blackadder’, which covers a different era in each of its seasons, and pokes fun at the era with its characters. I’ve included a clip of part of the show.

Well that’s all thanks for reading,

-Jaymeson