Remembering the War Dead

 

On every tour there will be a form of collective remembrance; the more formal occasion will be at the Menin Gate in Ypres or the Thiepval Memorial on the Somme. However, for everybody involved, perhaps most poignant form of remembrance will be at a graveside in a battlefield cemetery. Each person has the opportunity to present family information for the researching of a war grave or memorial. These individual visits are very important; on many occasions the person concerned is the first member of the family to make such a visit, the whole group then comes together to share in this caring and sensitive occasion.

 

At the Menin Gate we will participate in the daily ceremony with four members of the group placing a wreath of poppies under the arch. This is always pre-booked for you, and if ceremonial protocol allows, one additional person from the group will have unique experience of reading the exhortation under the gate during the ceremony. School uniform is always worn on this occasion.

 

For tours based on the Somme we will use the Thiepval Memorial for our own wreath laying ceremony.

‘They shall grow not old

As we that are left grow old

Age shall not weary them

Nor the years condemn

At the going down of the sun

And in the morning

We will remember them’.

 

For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon.1914

‘I put my poppy cross on a Sergeant called J Wilkinson from a South African Regiment. He was 34 years old and had children. He stood out to me because at the bottom of his headstone was the inscription – Daddy, only those who have loved and lost can understand’.

 

‘As I stood in the cemetery, I saw something I’ve never seen before, full respect. I heard something I’ve never heard before, pure silence’.

 

‘ My whole weekend has been brilliant but very emotional. I am really sad we have to leave tomorrow and wish we were staying a bit longer.

The best part was Tyne Cot and the Menin Gate. At both places I was moved to tears. Words cannot describe how I felt’.

 

Year 9 students

‘Thank you for taking us to the battlefields and to especially thank you for arranging the visit to my great-uncle at Berks Cemetery. I hope to go back at some point because I would like the chance to take it all in again’.

She did go back two years later on their next school tour and proudly guided her younger sister to see the memorial; who in turn, returned two years later to simply ‘take it all in again’. A year later, she proudly wore her Great Grandfather’s medals at a wreath laying at Thiepval Memorial during an ‘A’ Level poetry tour.