This year 48 girls in Year 10 participated in our visits to First World War sites in Ypres and on the Somme. As always it proved to be an emotional trip with a number of girls either finding graves of ancestors or their names on the Memorials to the Missing.

On Friday we visited sites in and around Ypres. These included Poperinghe where the girls heard about those soldiers who were ‘Shot at Dawn’, the German cemetery at Langemarck and the CWGC cemetery at Tyne Cot. In the evening we attended the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate where two girls laid a poppy wreath on behalf of the school.

On Saturday we travelled into France to the area of the Somme. Here our purpose was to trace key points of the front line and learn about the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. We began at Serre where many of the Pals’ Battalions began the attack. From there we went to Beaumont Hamel, the site of the Canadian attack, and to Ulster Tower, the site of the Irish attack. The penultimate site was Lochnager Crater, created by the allied attempt to blow up the enemy lines. Our visit ended at Thiepval, the memorial to the missing of the Somme.