A group of forty one boys from the Fourth Form (Year 9) and four teachers departed from Charterhouse early on Sunday 8 May bound for the World War One battlefields of Ypres. The first point of call was the Bayernwald trench system, this section of German trench overlooking Ypres has been preserved for visitors. It is said to be one of the sectors where Adolf Hitler served as a soldier. To get another perspective on the battlefield the group moved to Hill 60. As the Hill was a small area of elevated land in a flat landscape, it had strategic importance in the battle for Ypres. Following the end of the War, the land was left relatively undisturbed and the boys were able to explore some of the bunkers and defensive positions that remain. A short walk from Hill 60 is Caterpillar crater, which was formed when a mine containing a million pounds of explosives was detonated under the German trenches in June 1917. The blast was said to have rattled windows in London.
After settling into the Menin Gate Schools Hotel, and a fortifying supper of chicken and chips, the boys then managed to keep the chocolatiers of Ypres in business before attending the moving Menin Gate Last Post ceremony.
On Monday after breakfast, the group visited the site of the advanced dressing station at Essex Farm where the Canadian doctor, John McCrae, wrote the famous poem ‘In Flanders Fields’. In the cemetery is buried Rifleman Valentine Strudwick who had lied about his age to join the Army and was killed aged just 15. It was then on to the ridge near Passchendaele, where a quarter of a million British and Empire soldiers and 200,000 Germans were killed in the Third Battle of Ypres. From the vantage point on top of German built concrete machine gun bunkers, the boys were able to get a sense of the scale and difficulty encountered in 1917. Alexander Tsang (R) was able to see the inscription to his great great grandfather John Henry Stokes who was killed in August 1917 aged 36 leaving a wife and five children. John Stokes’ body was never found.
Our last act of the trip was a short remembrance service at the graveside of Thomas Thorp, who left Weekites in 1915 and was killed in action in 1917. Current Weekites Tom Jackson and Loius Ward laid a wreath.
Photographs top left to bottom right: Alexander Tsang, pupils in trenches, group photograph at Tyne Cot, Louis Ward and Tom Jackson laying a wreath.
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