Head's Newsletter 8 July 2016

Year 10 Trip to Ypres 2016

In the penultimate week of June, 50 Year 10 Historians travelled to Ypres for the annual Battlefields trip, helping them to prepare for their Controlled Assessment in September. The boys enjoyed a packed, intensive schedule and carried themselves maturely and receptively throughout. Starting on the Thursday with the largest cemetery for Commonwealth burials from both the First and Second World Wars, Tyne Cot, Mr Brown gave a short, atmospheric talk to the group as the rains came in across Ypres and gunshots fired in the background.

boys to walk through and soak up the atmosphere (and mud); the Hooge Crater , a huge hole blown in the ground to the east of Ypres by a mine-blowing operation in 1915; and the cemetery at Cement House, where we were able to pay our respects to a number of allied soldiers, including the ex-Tiffinian Charles Eglington, who joined the army as an artillery gunner under age and lost his life towards the end of the war. Along with this, the boys were able to visit the town of Ypres itself to see the centre of the fighting in North Belgium throughout the First World War. Chocolates were bought, tonnes of frites were eaten and the boys left the town on the Friday afternoon to catch the ferry both replete and very well informed as to the actions of the allied armies in Belgium in the First World War.

It was a very apt start to the trip and was followed by a stark contrast in the visit to the German Langemark cemetery, a dark tree-covered set of mass graves concentrated in a much smaller area where Mr Bryan Williams and Mr Reekes spoke about the fighting in the area and the first use of poison gas in the War. The rain continued to blow in and the clouds moved overhead but the visit was again very atmospheric, marking a perfect comparison to the cemetery at Tyne Cot and the ceremony at the Menin Gates that evening. Friday was even more intensive, with Hill 62 and its surrounding trenches for the

Boys looking at names inscribed on the Menin Gate