Pupils win moving visit to WWI sites
TWO pupils from Christ The King embarked on a special history trip to the WWI battlefields in Belgium and France as the world marked the centenary of the war’s end.
Year 11 Elspeth Noad and Brendan Walker submitted the winning entries in a competition organised by Christ The King’s history teacher Miss Mitchell, and were rewarded with the two spots on the trip.
Miss Mitchell said: “The First World War centenary programme started in 2014 in the build-up to the centenary.
“They’ve been offering each year three places, for a teacher and two students.
“We took advantage of the last run of it, obviously it was a good time to go.
“I did a competition to ask them why we should remember the First World War and of the entries Elspeth and Brendan got picked.”
Elspeth said: “We should remember because they were our age, quite a lot of them, there were 63 15-year-olds that died.
“It’s real people, they didn’t realise what they were letting themselves in for.”
The trip came at a good time, as they witnessed a once in a lifetime event.
Brendan said: “When we were there we went to the Menin Gate for a Last Post ceremony which happens every day, but what we didn’t realise was there was two Australian soldiers and a British soldier that had been found, unidentified, but they were having a procession while we were there.
“We got to see the ceremony and then when we were at the Tyne Cot Cemetery they were there having been buried the day before.
“It’s still relevant.”
Miss Mitchell added: “They’re still finding bodies of the men who fought, they discovered those bodies in 2016 and we got to see the ceremony before the reinterment of them at Tyne Cot, which is the biggest British memorial to the First World War.”
Brendan said: “It was a bit of a shock because we weren’t expecting it, but then when you’re stood there it makes you think, you’re stood at a memorial that was built 100 years ago but it’s still happening.
The service lasted over half an hour, longer than the usual 15-minute Last Post ceremony, and featured a full military procession.
Miss Mitchell said: “There were people from Australia who had come over, they had the national anthem sung and the two bodies were brought in coffins and taken out to a hearse.
“There were hundreds there.”
Other than the special