Journey to The Front

Probably one of the best (and most depressing) school trip I've ever been to. A few weeks ago, well, we're talking about March 11th we got up really early and journeyed to France from where we took a coach all the way to Belgium. Obviously, I knew why we were going, this was history, this was what we had been looking at but to be honest I had no idea what to expect. I had been fasicnated with WW1 for quite a long while now becuase of it's interesting history but I guess I have a deep interest for the individuals of the war and their phycological changes and traumatising experiences. That makes me sound morbid but there is something just as interesting as all the artefacts and weapons as the soldiers who all had lives before the war that resulted in the drastic changes on their perspective of life.
Our first stop was the first of many visits to several different Commonwealth War cemetries. I was immediately struck by the haunted beauty of it all. The rows and rows of similar graves marked with the names of different soldiers, some unknown, but many were there. I was most surprised by the fact that the British bothered to bury the Germans but then I think about my interest in the individuals and you just think they were soldiers just like everybody else, some fighting for reasons they did not even know. Our guides could not be more interesting as they told us real stories during the time period and about the only female ever to be buried in a commonwealth war cemetery, Nellie Spindler.
Our visit to the German front line just outside the town of Ypres was when it really kicked in that I was actually where I was. On the edge of a battlefield. We were told all about the battle of Ypres and shown the British front line which was positioned to a disadvantage as it was downhill. We entered Ypres and it was so hard to belive that the buildings were so young becuase the town was rebuilt exactly as it previously after the mass destruction the war had had on the town.
The most emotional part was Tyne cot, the largest commonwealth war cemetery in the world and I was there. The rows and rows of the white stone were just like all the other cemetries we had visited but this had a sort of nostalga to add to it as the sun was setting over the hill to conclude a memorable and emotional day. But the beautiful and massive war memorial dedicated to all the missing soldiers was mesmerising. I'll never forget it. I urge all of you who have not been to make a trip to Belgium and visit the war cemetries to try to comprehend very slightly the scale of the war and what resulted from it all those years ago.
I have a few souvenirs from the museum in Ypres, a few postcards which I have now been stuck on my wall but I doubt I will need them the remember what I saw becuase my it will stick in my memory for a long time. Even now I'm reading books about world war 1. It's Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks and I'm loving every page of it.