Emotional visit to graves
A 26-strong party from Hunstanton's Glebe House private prep school has returned from a poignant two-day trip to the First World War battlefields and cemeteries in Belgium.
It was an emotional experience for the 24 children, accompanied by headmaster John Crofts and head of English Mrs Sarah Hayes, as they learned about how young men served – and died – during the harsh trench warfare.
During a visit to the Tyne Cot cemetery, head boy Jack Gillett and head girl Francesca Cowan laid a wreath at the foot of a wall bearing the names of two of Glebe House's old boys, H. Kenyon-Bagshaw and John Hartley, who are among nearly 12,000 Commonwealth Forces' soldiers buried there.
Mr Crofts said: "Walking around Ypres and even up to the Menin Gate, it was difficult to imagine how it would have felt 90 years earlier. But as the several hundred present there at 8pm fell silent to the strains of the Last Post, we felt a unity with all the names on the memorial."
Recalling the moment in her diary, 12-year-old Lucy Tucker said: "I felt very emotional and taken back because they take it very seriously. In front of me was a widow from the war and it put it into context for me."
Referring to a German cemetery, she pointed out: "Around a mass grave there were 20 stone pillars – each pillar had 1,000 names on it. I felt like all the soldiers had been forgotten."
And on Perth cemetery, where most of the people who were court martialled are buried, she said: "I still don't understand why people were killed for being scared."
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Weather for King's Lynn
Sunday 27 May 2012
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