By Community Correspondent: Matthew Born

Last week boys in Tiffin School in Year 11 took part in the annual history trip to the Belgian City of Ypres, a trip shared by many other schools across the country. The weather was dire - cold, windy and muddy – the journey was long, and the starts were, in the opinion of many of the boys, inhumanly early. It was not necessarily looked forward to. Yet, as always, the trip to Ypres was one of the most important dates on the calendar for the history department and the students, because nothing can startle you into realising the stark truth of WW1 than the sight of row upon row upon row of plain white, identical gravestones. Nothing.

It is easy to forget in the impressive medieval centre of Ypres, with the clusters of tiny little chocolate shops and the smell of Belgian waffles heavy in the air, about the devastation that occurred less than one hundred years ago. It is easy to forget that the whole city of Ypres was razed to the ground by relentless bombardment. It is easy to forget about the blood that was spilt defending that city – the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of lives lost in the war. Until, that is, you leave the town, and drive through the Menin Gate.

If anything can show you the sheer scale of the conflict then it is the Menin Gate. Fifty-thousand names adorn its walls, from Singhs to Smiths and from Patels to Peters, honouring those Commonwealth soldiers killed in the Great War without their bodies ever being found. And in the Menin Gate, every night at 8:00pm since 1927, the local fire brigade play the last post on their horns in what has become a bit of a tourist attraction. So it should be. The eerie, echoing acoustics give the last post a spiritual, ethereal quality making it an emotional experience for those who witness it, transforming it from a tourist attraction to something else. It is something everybody should witness, whatever their age, race or background.

Tiffin Boy’s returned to England, but the memory of Ypres will live on in their minds. There is a reason the trip runs every year. It is not because it is needed for work. It is because it is right.