Year 8 Battlefields Trip

Year 8 set out for an informative and thought-provoking exploration of the WW1 Battlefields at Ypres and the Somme in Belgium and Northern France earlier this week.

The time spent in the cemeteries and trenches was an eye opener as it brought the history they had learnt from textbooks into the brutal reality that was the ‘Great War’, enabling them to see things from a soldier's point of view rather than that of an historian.

Most enlightening was seeing and feeling the trenches of the German front line and how the grey solidarity of the gravestones brought 'alive' the terrible cost of the war.

The boys visited Newfoundland Park, stood on top of Hawthorn Ridge in the Somme and paid their respects to Old Olavians, Edgar Churcher, and  ‘Jimmie’ Ruggles.