Sunday 16 th March Wednesday 19 th March 2014 Adnan Saif & Mohammed Talha (Year 9) were selected to take part in the First World War Centenary Education Programme. This was a joint Government initiative between the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government to deepen understanding about the First World War, uncover personal connections and create an enduring legacy. Talha, Adnan and Mrs McAneny travelled to the battlefields of the Ypres Salient (Belgium) and The Somme (France) on a 3 night/4 day tour on Sunday 16 th March 2014 with 15 other schools from the Midlands. Here are some of the highlights of their trip. Sunday 16 th March Birmingham to Ashford, Kent After an early start we met up with the other 14 schools on the trip at Digbeth Coach Station, from here we travelled down to Ashford in Kent to the Kingswood Activity we were staying at, Grosvenor Hall. Talha and Adnan found their rooms and then were straight into the rock climbing, high ropes and team building activities, whilst Mrs McAneny attended some very long meetings about what would be happening over the next three days. After an authentic World War One dinner it was time for some research in the classroom. The students were given an IPad and were asked to research a local soldier from Kings Heath who had fought and been killed in WWI, after a while they were able to find a young man from Heathfield Road in Kings Heath called George Depper. Adnan and Talha then used their free membership of Ancestry.com and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Grosvenor Hall Activity Centre (cwgc.co.uk) to find out about George Depper s family and to locate the cemetery he was buried in. They discovered that he had joined the 12 th Battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles at Birmingham Town Hall on 25 th August 1914, that his wife was called Phoebe and he was killed in action on 15 th April 1918 aged 24 fighting in the Third Battle of Ypres or Passchendaele. His body was located at Tyne Cot Cemetery in Belgium which we were due to visit the next day. Monday 17 th March Ashford to Belgium Tyne Cot Cemetery After a very early morning and big breakfast we made our way to Belgium via the Channel Tunnel. Our first stop of the day was Tyne Cot Cemetery where Adnan and Talha were hoping to find George Depper and lay a remembrance Poppy Cross. Tyne Cot is the largest British and Commonwealth War Cemetery in the world, 11,956 soldiers are buried there. Adnan and Talha Zonnebeke, Belgium
discovered that George Depper s body was never found and so he is remembered on the Memorial to the Missing inside the cemetery where another 34,927 soldiers are remembered. Using their research from the night before it didn t take Adnan and Talha long to find George s name on the memorial. An aerial view of Tyne Cot Cemetery Where our local soldier is remembered Adnan & Talha lay their remembrance poppy cross for George Depper Langemark Cemetery After lunch it was time to visit a German Cemetery to commemorate the German soldiers from the same battle that George Depper had fought in. The Germans remember their dead very differently, they have 8 bodies per grave and have black stones instead of white and they lay them down in the grass. In the middle of the cemetery there was a mass grave for 25,000 soldiers who were unidentified. It was a very different experience to that of the British Cemetery. Memorial Museum Passchendaele Langemark German Cemetery From here we made the quick journey to the Passchendaele museum. Here we were able to see weapons, uniforms and shells as well as enter the underground dugout and recreated German and British trenches which were exactly as they would have been during the Battle of Passchendaele that George Depper fought in. Memorial Museum Passchendaele Whilst we were here Adnan and Talha were filmed by the tour company for their promotional DVD to be sent to all schools this term. They were also filmed and interviewed by the BBC and ITV during our trip. Adnan & Talha try out the British Firestep in the trenches The Menin Gate & the Last Post Ceremony 8pm The Menin Gate The Menin Gate is a memorial to the missing which was built after the war at one of the gateways into the city of Ypres (where we were staying). It was the main route taken by the soldiers to reach the front line and today the memorial records the names of 54,406 soldiers from Britain, India, Australia and Canada who lost their lives and have no known grave. Every night, at 8pm, the Last Post Ceremony is held
as a unique act of remembrance, the Gate is closed to traffic and falls silent as buglers from the town s Fire Brigade sound the Last Post. The first ceremony took place in 1928 and in August 2015 the 30,000 th ceremony will be held. Tuesday 18 th March Ypres, Belgium to the Somme, France Neuve Chapelle Indian Memorial The Buglers who sound the Last Post This memorial commemorates the 4742 Indian Soldiers with no known grave who died whilst fighting for the British in WWI. Around 140,000 Indian soldiers fought on the Western Front between 1914 and 1915. Indian soldiers won 13,000 medals for bravery during the war. The location of this memorial was chosen because Indian Troops took part in the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in 1915, it is a circular structure with carvings of the Star of India and the Imperial Crown and the names of the dead are recorded on panels. Adnan & Talha were particularly moved by their time at Neuve Chapelle, they spent a long time reading the names on the walls and taking photographs. Talha, Adnan & Mrs McAneny at Neuve Chapelle Fromelles Military Cemetery & VC Corner Australian Cemetery & Memorial The Battle of Fromelles was the first time Australian troops saw action in WWI, the battle was a disaster and is described as the worst 24 hours in Australia s entire history. This is the only wholly Australian Cemetery in France and contains 410 unidentified bodies that were found at the end of the war, they are buried in two mass graves marked by two large concrete Cobbers at the Australian Memorial crosses. In 2009 250 unidentified bodies were found in mass graves on the edge of Pheasant Wood. They were reburied with full military honours in a series of funeral services in a brand Australian Cemetery new cemetery which was the first Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery to be built for 50 years. DNA analysis is now being used to try and identify the bodies. Thiepval Memorial, The Somme Adnan at the Thiepval Memorial The most impressive monument we visited on our 4 day trip was the Thiepval Memorial built just above the Battlefields of the infamous Somme, where 19,420 men were killed on the first day of the battle on the 1 st July 1916 the most disastrous day the British Army has ever experienced. The memorial was built between 1928 and 1932 and is the largest British war memorial in the world. It commemorates the 72,192 missing British and South African men who died on the Somme battlefields between 1915 and Thiepval Memorial March 1918 and have no known grave.
The Thiepval Memorial is enormous, the photograph on the left shows Adnan dwarfed by the sheer size of the memorial. Its size serves as a reminder of the scale of the loss that was experienced during the Battle of the Somme and the true horrors of warfare in the First World War. The battle lasted 4 months and Britain lost 420,000 men in total. Sheffield Memorial Park This site contains memorials to various Pals Battalions and nearby are the cemeteries where many of the Pals are buried. At this particular site the Accrington Pals (a group of 700 men who all knew each other and joined up together) began their attack on the 1 st July 1916, within 30 minutes 235 of them were dead and 350 lay in no-mans-land wounded. They had made it less than 100 metres from their trench. Whilst we were at the memorial Taff, our serving British soldier, talked us through a comparison between the Accrington Pals and the 6 weeks training they received and the months of training he received when he joined the army. He also talked about the difference in equipment and the way in Taff in front of the Accrington Pals Cemetery which British soldiers conduct their battles now compared to the trench warfare of the First World War. In the photograph above, Taff is stood in an enormous shell hole that was created by the German artillery as they tried to destroy the British trenches and the soldiers inside them before they could attack the German trenches on 1 st July 1916. Wednesday 19 th March Ypres, Belgium to Birmingham, England In Flanders Field Museum, Ypres On the final morning we packed our suitcases and made our way onto the coach for three more sites before getting the train back to England. Our first stop was the In Flanders Fields Museum in the centre of Ypres, it is housed in the Cloth Hall which was completely destroyed during the First World War after the town suffered continual bombardment. The building that stands there today is an exact reconstruction of the original Cloth Hall, as is the rest of the town. Ypres Cloth Hall today were devastated by four years of war. In the museum, Adnan and Talha had interactive bracelets to follow the stories of British and German soldiers as well as Belgian citizens of Ypres whose lives The Cloth Hall in 1918 Lijssenthoek Cemetery, Poperinge In 1915 the first of a number of military hospitals was established on this site as it was far enough from the front line to be realtively safe. Because of this Lijssenthoek is the second largest military cemetery in Belgium. Nellie Spindler is buried in this cemetery, she is one of only two women buried in a military cemetery in Belgium. She was one of many qualified nurses who joined the Queen Alexandra s Imperial Military Lijssenthoek Cemetery Nursing Service to work in the field hospitals on the Western Front after training at Whittington in Lichfield, not far from where Mrs McAneny lives. She was mortally wounded on 21 st August 1917 whilst on duty. Nellie Spindler s grave
Mrs McAneny was particularly moved by Lijssenthoek Cemetery, there are over 10,000 graves in the cemetery and there is very little space between them which reinforces the vast quantity of men who are in there. Unlike other cemeteries, young 18 year old Privates lie side-by-side with significant Generals who would have led the army and made decisions about the battles that were being fought. This is unique to this cemetery because it used to be the site of a hospital instead of a battlefield. Talbot House, Poperinge Our final visit was to Talbot House. During the war it was run by Tubby Clayton and what made it unique was that it accepted soldiers of all ranks. Usually Privates and Officers would never mix socially when they were resting from the fighting in the trenches. At Talbot House, once you were inside you were an Everyman, your rank or position in the army didn t matter, all men mixed, sat and relaxed together. On the right you can see Talha with the founder of Talbot House Tubby Clayton. Talha & Tubby