A Patch Of Light

STT's John Adamson offers some suggestions to colleagues leading a school tour of the WW1 battlefields of France and Belgium in 2014.

The death of Harry Patch, reputedly the last surviving soldier of the Great War, 38 days into his 112th year brought the last chapter of one of humanity's most tragic stories to a close on July 25th 2009. Five years on, the focus at the outset on this one remarkable man is helpful as we look to extend our students' understanding of Harry Patch and his contemporary generations whose youth was simply blown away in the folly of war, nowhere more poignantly expressed than in the Battle of the Somme and in the mud of Paschaendale. And as if the mud were not enough, the inevitable resonance of the Somme is with sombre - a vision of dark clouds over a landscape still so scarred by the butchery of 1916. The whole area seems to demand a church-like reverence and contemplation, unspoken thoughts and an emotion of absolute and ultimate sadness as we pay our respects to those not much older than the children we teach whose bodies were found, and to those whose remains were not. But a hundred years on, we as educators are called to interpret the Somme for our pupils in a new 21st century light; it is not enough to accept the final validity of that view and return from the tour satisfied that our bit has been done, shaking our heads at the folly of war. The sacrifice of our compatriots demands more of our profession than simple acceptance and acknowledgement. We are called to do more.

The focus of so much of 2014 is Ypres, where accommodation is already at a premium. So if you are yet to book, why not consider staying in the Amiens area, just over an hour and a half by coach from the Eurotunnel Coquelles terminal. It was from Amiens that bi-planes took off to support the Somme offensive, the airfield visible at the start of your journey to Albert.

A day visiting the Battlefields of Northern France can - if handled correctly and sensitively - bring out emotions in us all which we may not have previously experienced. To achieve that in our pupils is to create empathy, fashion a deeper understanding and engage the student in a profound response. We as leaders cannot do that by concentrating on statistics and cold facts alone. Whilst they are important, the story of the Somme is fundamentally a message about the human condition. Our job is to enable our pupils to access that story through the heart as well as the head, and the secret of doing so is to broaden that focus initially to the sheer scale of the horror - but then to bring it back eventually to one man through the itinerary we plan. The statistics speak for themselves, eight and a half million men killed in the war, twenty one million wounded and near eight million taken captive, nearly 60,000 wounded on day one of the battle, some twenty thousand of them dead, the virtual annihilation of the Newfoundlander regiment on that day, forty lives the cost of every metre gained in some four months of battle. Mind-blowing. But the emotionally charged story of individual heroism is as powerful. Private Billy McFadzean was giving out hand grenades in Thiepval Woods when he noticed one had lost its pin and was about to go off in the woods. He threw his body onto the grenade, taking the force of the blast, killing himself but saving his comrades. He won a posthumous Victoria Cross.

You may well find individual stories in the families of the pupils you bring on the trip. Everyone was touched by the war, and most schools have a link with at least one soldier buried somewhere out on the Somme, or named on the imposing memorial at Thiepval. Our school journeys can mirror that of a relative who fought in the conflict, and they can close the day with a short ceremony at the graveside. Older establishments will have former pupils named and remembered on a varnished board, which can be revisited afterwards with renewed meaning.

Back on the road and after reaching Albert, you might choose to pause on the road to Bapaume and note the marking of the front line at the roadside, and the pitifully short journey to its position over four months later which was paid at such a terrible cost.

Turn left as you approach Bapaume and follow the Route Departementale to Serre, following the footpath to the Sheffield memorial Park. You will feel the sensation of being on a battlefield - it is hard to pick out a road beyond the farm track you are walking, and the scarring of the landscape is quite evident at certain times of year. Continue into the copse to see the moving memorials to the Barnsley and Accrington Pals and the site of the supply railway from Amiens behind the tree line. Look for the trench at the head of the copse.

Then reduce your focus a little to one regiment as you take a left turn in Beaumont-Hamel and head for the sunken lane. Use a copy of the original footage filed by Geoffrey Malins available in The Battle of the Somme DVD to show your pupils what happened on the exact spot where you are, let them see the young men of the Lancashire Fusiliers nervously awaiting the order to attack, then walk them to the miniature cemetery in the middle of a farmer's field where they were laid to rest after encountering German machine gun fire from the copse beyond.

Drive the short distance to the Newfoundland Park and experience the unnatural landscape shaped by trenches and explosions, see the Danger Tree and learn the human story of that regiment through the visitor centre and the guides who are there to help. Here, the wider impact of the war is nowhere so poignant.

Continue on to Thiepval, stopping at the Ulster Tower en route. Contrast the heroism of Billy McFadzean with the huge monument and briefly recall the bigger picture, the commemoration of more than 74,000 men who were lost and never found. Let your pupils use the visitor centre to the full before you continue to La Grande Mine, the Lochnagar Crater, at La Boiselle where a simple cross marks the spot where Private George Nugent of the Tyneside Scottish Northumberland Fusiliers, killed in action on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, was found as recently as 1998 and laid to rest at Ovillers Military Cemetery with his comrades. And close your day with a short ceremony to mark the grave of one man linked to your school.

There are many more sights and sites, and you will want to use those which tell your story best. But let's ensure that 2014 is a year in which teachers make a real difference by enabling our pupils to experience those new and profound emotions which only the Somme can evoke, and let you take each student home imbued with a deeper understanding of life and death. Harry Patch would thank us for it.