Highdown School visit to Ypres and the Somme, July 2nd and 3rd 1916 Essex Farm Cemetery, Ypres Essex Farm was the base for an advanced dressing station and John MacCrae, a Canadian, was a doctor stationed there. He wrote the very famous poem, In Flanders Fields. Henry, Y10 has family from Canada and he had the honour of reading the poem to the other students. Mr Hogan reading extracts from the diary of a General based at Essex Farm. He wrote a very accurate account of what the area was like during the war.
Poppies growing at Essex Farm. Blue Corn flowers are also visible. The Cornflower is the French equivalent of our Poppy. Artillery Wood Cemetery, near Ypres
As you can see, Sergeant Hornblow came from Caversham and lived in what is now Gardiner’s Nursing Agency. He appears on the War Memorial by the Thames. Langemark German Cemetery Langemark cemetery is one of only 4 German cemeteries in the Flanders region. It contains approximately 44 000 bodies. 25 000 of them are in a mass grave, pictured opposite. Each of the pillars below contains the names of the 25 000 men buried in the mass grave. The names appear on both sides of the pillars. There are 18 pillars in total. On the right is a corridor, which is part of the entrance to the cemetery. It is 60 feet long and is the same length as the depth of the mass grave. Tyne Cot British and Commonwealth Cemetery, Passchendaele Tyne Cot Cemetery is the resting place of 11,954 soldiers of the Commonwealth Forces. This is the largest number of burials contained in any Commonwealth cemetery of either the First or Second World War. It is the largest Commonwealth military cemetery in the world.
Ypres and the Menin Gate
Ypres is a small Belgian market town which was at the centre of fighting in this part of Europe. It was held by the British and was a gateway to the fighting on the front. The Germans attempted to recapture it throughout the war. The Menin Gate Memorial is perhaps the most visited Great War Memorial on the Western Front. The original Menin Gate marked the start of one of the main roads out of Ypres towards the front line and tens of thousands of men must have passed through it and onwards along the infamous Menin Road, so many of them never to return.
Just some of the 54 896 names on panels inside the Menin Gate. They are the commonwealth soldiers whose bodies were never found. The Somme The Lochnagar mine crater is the largest man-made mine crater created in the First World War on the Western Front. It was laid by the British Army's 179th Tunnelling Company Royal Engineers underneath a German strongpoint called “Schwaben Höhe”. The mine was exploded two minutes before 07.30 am Zero Hour at the launch of the British offensive against the German lines on the morning of 1st July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The photo below shows just how close the British and German trenches were. Poppies growing amongst the wheat by Lochnagar crater The Thiepval Memorial on the Somme
The memorial was built between 1929 and 1932 and was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, who also designed the Cenotaph in Whitehall. The memorial commemorates more than 72 205 men from the British and South African armies who were declared missing in the Somme between July 1915 and March 1918. Either the bodies of these men were never found or the body was found but couldn’t be identified. Nearly 90% of these men were killed during the Battle of the Somme with about 12,000 on the first day of the offensive. Emily, Alex, Lucy and Kate wrote the messages on the wreaths and so had the honour of laying them at the Thiepval Memorial on behalf of the school.