On Friday 2nd November 60 of Year 9  students and 6 wide eyed members of staff awoke at 2:30am to begin their long journey to and from the Battle of the Somme. We convened at school at 4am, with the students surprisingly rather awake. Our first site was that of Vimy Ridge; a Canadian site on the Western Front that has been preserved in concrete form. The students could walk around the front line trenches and underground through the 100m long tunnel dug through chalk to enable attacks upon the enemy trench just 25 meters away. This is the closest point on the Western front between the two front lines.

We then travelled on to Lochnager; essentially a big hole (mine crater) like no other and something that always brings a solemnity to the faces of teenagers as the scale of war becomes starkly real. This is one of the craters that signalled the start of the attack on the calamitous first day of the Somme.

Our next stop was the Newfoundland trench system where the students could walk through preserved but unchanged trenches and across no man’s land to really get a feel for the fighting that took place. Finally we visited Thiepval, a memorial to over 70,000 dead and missing British bodies where we held a brief and poignant ceremony after locating two soldiers from East Grinstead on the memorial itself.  The  students should be commended for their impeccable behaviour throughout the day, it was a pleasure to accompany them.