After a night spent at St Martins Plain Camp, Folkestone, pupils’ first stop was a self-guided tour at the Passchendaele Museum followed by a picnic lunch, before Sgt Price and Capt Linnell set the scene by giving a brief on the ground situation and enemy strength and positions on the Ypres Salient. This allowed the pupils to gain more of an understanding as to why the high ground was of strategic importance and how important it was that Ypres was held by the Allied Forces.
Pupils also saw the remains of the bunkers, trenches and the craters left behind after the tunnelling tactics used by the miners to lay huge amounts of explosives under the German trenches.
The final act of the day was at the Menin Gate at Ypres to take part in the daily service of remembrance. Denstone College’s three senior cadets Conor McLoughlin, Ed Baker and Ben McCosh did the school proud as they laid a wreath during the incredibly moving ceremony.
Sunday saw a visit to the largest Commonwealth War memorial on The Western Front. Tynecot bears the names of nearly 35,000 soldiers with no known grave. It was a sobering way to spend a morning, which finished up with each of the Lower Sixth pupils giving a small speech about an Old Denstonian whose name was either at the Menin Gate or Tynecot memorials. Sgt Price then read In Flanders Fields, leaving pupils and staff feeling incredibly emotional.
On the way back to the ferry, pupils stopped off at Lijssethoek Military Cemetery to complete the picture of an army at war.
A long coach journey saw the group get back to school late on Sunday evening after bumping into Eddie Jones at McDonalds at the service station, a great way to round the trip off!
