On Sunday 5th February, several groups of  pupils from schools in the North East and Birmingham started their journey to Ypres, Belgium to take part in a World War One Battlefields trip to commemorate World War One.

When we got to Kent, our first stop, we took part in team building exercises to break the ice and make new friends. We were also given a WW1 soldier to research; they gave us each a soldier from where we lived or had some kind of connection to us.

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When we visited the many war cemeteries and memorials, it was overwhelming to actually visualise how many soldiers were killed in the many battles of WW1. Whilst we were visiting the memorials,we had to look for the soldier that we were given in Kent. I found the soldier I had been given at Tyne Cot cemetery which is one of the biggest cemeteries in Belgium.

One of the things that surprised me is that there was a German memorial for the dead. However, the German war graves were a lot dirtier than the British ones. The graveyard itself was dark and gloomy with no personal touches from the family of the dead. There is one mass grave with hundreds of people in them. Not one individual had a grave to themselves; there was at least eight to a grave. The land in which they were buried belongs to Belgium whereas the the British war cemeteries belonged to the British because Belgium wanted to give the land to them because they felt like they owed them for helping them throughout the war.

One of my favourite activities was doing the ‘Coming World Remember Me’ workshop. We all made clay figures of people curled up to commemorate the dead. All these figures will go on display as part of a remembrance display in Belgium.

This trip was an amazing experience and I really enjoyed it. I think it is very important to remember the soldiers that died for our country in World War One.

By Lucy, Year 7.