Year 9 Battlefields Trip

Around midnight on Friday 18th October, a very sleepy coach carrying 45 Year 9s ventured out of the Marlborough School car park for the annual WWI Battlefields trip. 

The first visit of the whirlwind three days was to the site of the Battle of Arras. Students first visited the site of the Vimy Ridge memorial, which commemorates the Canadian sacrifice during the offensive of April 1917.  After Vimy Ridge came the Wellington tunnels, a series of strategic pathways dug by Maori tunnellers to secretly connect British soldiers to the front line. Finally, the group headed to the hostel, which has welcomed Marlborough students for many years, to enjoy a well-deserved dinner and rest. 

On the second day, the coach travelled back into Northern France, this time to see sites along the Somme. Students began by looking at the Devonshire Cemetery, the final resting place of the 163 members of the Devonshire Regiment. Next came a visit to the Lochnagar crater, an enormous remnant of a mine which spreads 100 metres across. Finally, the group visited Thiepval, an enormous monument dedicated to the 72,000 British and South African soldiers who went missing during the Somme offensive.That evening, the whole group walked to the Menin Gate, from which troops departed for the battlefield. Here, they watched the Last Post, where buglers play to commemorate the fallen. 

On our third and final day, students walked into the town of Ypres. Students saw the Menin Gate again before heading for Essex Farm Cemetery. The wearied travellers hopped back on the bus on Sunday afternoon, threading back through Northern France and onto the ferry to Dover.  The annual battlefield trip is a valuable experience for students to get a sense for the scale and devastation of the First World War and pupils enjoyed the opportunity to enrich their history learning.