Belgium Trip, October 2022
The trip was very moving and it opened all of our eyes to the horrors of the Great War. We visited several memorials and cemeteries (including Tyne Cot and Essex Farm), where we placed wreaths for the Handsworth Grammar School ‘Old Boys’ who had lost their lives. The sheer number of people that died, and the number of bodies that haven’t been identified was terrible; our tour guide told us that about 1/5 of the people that died are still unidentified. In Ypres, there were only a few non-European graves; the most at a single cemetery was 12, but there were many names recorded on the memorials, further adding to the magnitude of the number of bodies not found. On the second day, we were privileged to attend the re-dedication ceremony of a grave of a soldier who had recently been identified. We also visited the German Langemark Cemetery.
At the Memorial Museum Passchendaele we saw the kind of conditions soldiers fought and lived in. The stories that our tour guide told us about the trenches made us feel grateful for being alive at this time. Many of the people that died as a result of trench warfare were forced to go ‘over the top’; they were shot down with machine guns. Failing to comply with orders may mean that their own commanders would shoot them for cowardice, something incredibly horrifying to visualise. Some were gassed, and many soldiers ran the wrong way, meaning the gas eventually caught up with them. We were told by our tour guide that the actions of the man that developed the gases (Fritz Haber) ultimately led to his own family’s destruction; his wife committed suicide as she couldn’t live with a man that was responsible for the deaths of so many, and his children were ultimately killed by the same gases in gas chambers because they were Jewish.
We learnt a lot about the war and, during a visit to Talbot House, we saw where soldiers could temporarily escape from the horrors of the trenches, and try to relax. The priest who set it up wanted the house to be enjoyed by all, no matter who they were; this was seen as radical back then as society was built on racism and rank. There, we were able to play chess and the piano, and we watched a video of a typical show that would have been performed there during the war.
On the Thursday evening at 8pm we witnessed the moving Last Post Ceremony at the Menin Gate.
We had some ‘down time’ during the trip, enjoying a game of bowling and, on the next evening, we went to play pool at the same venue. Some watched a very important football match which sadly didn’t go to plan as Mr Jones’s team lost! On the last day, we visited the beautiful city of Bruges, which had houses which greatly resembled those of Amsterdam. We enjoyed a canal tour which was very therapeutic and the photographs we captured were amazing. Many of us tried authentic Belgium waffles as well as chocolate, which tasted amazing!
Overall, the trip was thought-provoking and we learnt the scale of the sacrifice. I would like to thank Mr Jones, Mrs Hartt, Mrs Yates and Mr Campbell for the organisation of the trip as it went incredibly smoothly.
Hardev Manku (10W)
