Millions of people are expected to visit the former battlefield sites and war graves in Belgium and France over the next few years as the First World War is remembered. Zena Hawley reports on a trip by a group of Derby schoolchildren.
A GROUP of 25 schoolchildren from Da Vinci Community School are among the first youngsters from Derby to travel to the sites associated with the 1914-18 war following the Government's announcement that every school in the country should send pupils.
Many of the Da Vinci pupils have studied the First World War as part of their school curriculum, so knew some of the facts and figures associated with the conflict.
While they were there, the youngsters found the names of some of the soldiers which feature on the school's war memorial.
Humanities teacher Naomi White said research had been done before the trip so they knew where to look.
They found a D Herbert, Harry Collins and William Henry Cox on the Menin gate Memorial, and Jack Orme's grave in the Ecoivres Military Cemetery, near the Somme battlefield.
She said: "It was astounding to see the sheer number of names on the Menin Gate, and to know that some of them were people from Derby, who went to the school that we are at now.
"It's overwhelming and it really brings it home that young people were signing up to fight, without knowing what it was like out there.
"They were signing up to die, but it was the brave thing to do, and they all knew it and they all wanted to."
One name was of Jack Orme, 18, who was a pupil at the school when it was known as Derby Central School, before starting an apprenticeship in motor building and then joining up.
He spent a year fighting on the Western Front, before being killed.
Naomi said: "We laid a wreath on his grave, wanting to remember him and his story. He was so young, not much older than the students."
Being on the battlefields, seeing the hundreds of gravestones laid out as far as the eye can see, makes it much more than the statistics thrown around in the classroom.
Pupil James Morley, 15, said: "Some of the graves had lots of names on them – five, six, seven – and it's because they were blown up and the body parts couldn't be identified individually." he said.
They learnt about the Battle of the Somme, and how 60,000 soldiers were injured or died on the first day of the battle, on July 1 1916.
Pupil Rahul Raju said: "They were seeing their friends, family, die in front of them. They knew they were walking to their own deaths, but still they carried on walking.
"The German soldiers afterwards said that the British were the bravest soldiers they'd ever seen."
But Paul McPherson, their tour guide, told them that something like that would never happen today.
James said: "It was poor communication. There was no way for someone at the front line who could see the carnage, to get a message back to base to stop, to stop sending more and more men to their deaths."
The group also attended The Last Post service in Ypres, under the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing, an act of remembrance that has taken place every evening at 8pm since 1928.
It is a memorial to all the missing men who died in the Ypres Salient during the First World War.
Pupil William Morris, 13, is a cadet, and takes part in the laying of wreaths in Derby every year.
He said: "It's very important that we pay our respects at home and lay wreaths on the war memorials we have, but to see flowers being laid here, on a memorial to everyone who fought in the local area, on the ground we were standing on was very moving."
The group also visited the Essex Farm CommonwealthWar Graves Commission cemetery, the Hooge Crater Museum and Newfoundland Park, where there are preserved trenches.
