Pupils in Year 7 and 8 made the now annual pilgrimage to Ypres in Belgium, touring the Salient’s battlefields to understand the horrors of trench warfare in support of their classroom studies of the First World War. Starting at Talbot House in Poperinghe, which served as an Everman Club for soldiers of all ranks, pupils led a service of remembrance for the hundreds of thousands of men who sought refuge in the Upper Room, a converted hop loft, where many men took their first communion and many took their last.
Lunch at Bayernwald gave the opportunity for the pupils to explore the complex system of trenches that dominated warfare on the Western Front.
Thereafter we toured the Commonwealth War Grave Cemeteries to pay tribute to those who sacrificed their lives, focussing on the lives of Noel Chavasse, who extraordinarily won the Victoria Cross on two occasions by rescuing injured men from No Man’s Land, Nellie Spindler, a 26 year-old nurse from Wakefield who was mortally wounded by a shell splinter, and Old Roffensian, A. E. C. T. Dooner, one of 69 pupils of King’s killed in the misguidedly named “Great War”.
Attending the Last Post Ceremony held at the Menin Gate and the grave of Private Valentine Strudwick, a 15 year-old soldier – not much older than those in the party – who “grinned at life in empty joy” before witnessing “the hell where youth and laughter go”, pupils were left with stark messages of the horrors of war in the fields of Flanders, concluding a memorably poignant and informative day.
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