Trip to the Battlefields
Before half term our Year 11 historians visited The Ypres Salient, Belgium. The area was a focus of much fighting during the First World War and, astonishingly, a third of all the British Empire soldiers who died in the war did so there.
Year 11 are about to start studying the impact of the First World War on medical treatments. To support them in this, they visited many sites that were key to the development of medicine. Highlights of the trip included visiting a full size replica trench and exploring the conditions, visiting the grave of Nellie Spindler, a nurse who was the only woman to be buried with full military honours, and the site where surgeon John McCrae wrote the famous poem ‘In Flanders Fields’.
As well as spending time learning about medicine in the war, the group also took time to remember the School's Old Gattonians who died in the war. We visited the grave of Charles Warr at Tyne Cot cemetery and the Menin Gate, where Sydney Smith and William Wilson are remembered. The group stayed later and attended the Last Post at the Menin Gate, which was very touching.
10 November 2017
