Students in homage to WW1 hero

STUDENTS from Heathfield Community College laid a wreath on the Belgian grave of a young Broad Oak man who died in the First World War.

The moving gesture took place during a visit by 70 year nine students and staff to First World War battlefields and cemeteries around Ypres. The trip has been run by the college for the last three years and is part of the curriculum following the history of the 20th century.

This year, a special visit was made to a grave in Hooge Crater Cemetery. Here the group finally located the burial site of one local soldier, Jabez Kemp of the Royal Sussex Regiment and originally from the Broad Oak area, who died there when he was just 19. A wreath was laid and the group held a short silence as they contemplated both the sacrifice and suffering of all the soldiers who fought in the war.

The first visit of the trip was to Essex Farm cemetery, close to the town of Ypres itself, where the Canadian medical officer John McCrae wrote the famous poem 'In Flanders Fields while working at the dressing station there. The row upon row of white gravestones was a moving and sombre sight for many of the students and they listened carefully while members of staff described conditions faced by the soldiers there.

The youngest soldier buried there was just 15 when he died, only a year older than some of the students themselves. This was followed by a visit to Langemark cemetery where thousands of German soldiers are buried, 25,000 of them in one mass grave.

Further visits were then made to the superb exhibition in the rebuilt Cloth Hall in Ypres itself, and then the students were able to let off a bit of steam in the remaining trenches at Sanctuary Wood which were suitably muddy for the occasion. The last visit to a cemetery for the day, as dusk and the cold crept in, was to Tyne Cot Cemetery. This was the scene of bitter and sustained fighting during the attack on Passchendaele and the students were informed that it is the largest British and Commonwealth war cemetery in the world. Over 11,000 soldiers are buried there (70% of them unidentified) and the back wall holds the names of almost 35,000 whose bodies were never recovered.

Last of all, before the final coach and ferry journey home, was the chance to watch the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate in Ypres itself. Here, the Head of History at the college, Mr. McDonald, read the exhortation 'They shall grow not old and two students from the college, Toby Farmiloe and Sarah Reynolds, had the honour of laying the wreath in front of the watching crowd.