We will remember them...

Michael Weston writes about a visit this half term to the first world war battlefields of Northern France.

Having visited several key battlefield sites on Vimy Ridge and in the Ypres salient, we arrived at Tyne Cot, the largest of the many Commonwealth cemeteries on the Western Front, as the sun was going down. The sky was a bright blue, the air turning chill in the early autumn.

Twenty-five boys and three members of staff stood in silence as each boy took it in turn to read out from the list of names of those Old Shirburnians who had given their lives for their country during the Great War. We laid a wreath in their memory and observed a minute’s silence.

Hamish Dudgeon (4m) also recalls the visit:

"I was struck by the sheer number of graves – the ones at the near end when we entered were spaced out and there seemed to be few, until you looked a little farther and saw the immense numbers, about 12,000 in total. Then we were informed that of that more than half of the dead were unknown. This, for me, was the most surprising fact, and looking out over the rows of graves helped bring the point home"

From Tyne Cot we went on to the town of Ypres, in order to be present at the playing of the Last Post at the Menin Gate memorial. We joined several hundreds of others for the short ceremony, during which two boys laid another wreath on behalf of the School in memory of the fallen Old Shirburnians.

Posted: Friday, November 7, 2008