Year 9 History Visit to Ypres As part of a follow up task to your recent visit, a History Department competition is being run for the year group for each of the teaching groups in which students need to produce a pamphlet on the Ypres Salient outlining its main historical features and why they should be visited.

Follow up Task to Year 9 Ypres Battlefield Visit Using the knowledge that you gained from the visit to Ypres, you will produce a leaflet or information pack about the sites visited. This should explain what each site was – its purpose, what can be seen/learnt there. ALL WRITING MUST BE IN YOUR OWN WORDS – NOT COPIED. You should include pictures of the sites to support your information. You should also include a reflection about how these sites are valuable for us today & how they have supported your learning about WW1. Sites to include are : Ypres Menin Gate Langemark German Cemetery Lijssenthoek OR Essex Farm Allied Cemetery Sanctuary Wood (Hill 62) – trenches section

The Sites Ypres: Discussion of the town & how during the First World War it was surrounded on 3 sides by German forces (hence the name Ypres Salient) but was able to withstand their attack even though it was destroyed because of its large walls and canals. Menin Gate :This was constructed after the war when the town was rebuilt to recognise all of those soldiers who had died in the defence of the town and were not found after the war & how at 8.00pm every day since the 1920s (except during WWII) this is closed with the “Last Post” being played to commemorate those who helped to defend the town but lost their lives.

The Sites Sanctuary Wood: The reserve trenches known as Hill 62 and how they give an insight into conditions for ordinary soldiers on the Western Front i.e. mud and duckboards as well as the barbed wire and tunnels between various groups of trenches. Langemark cemetery: is one of only four First World War German cemeteries in the Flanders region. In the whole of Belgium there are 13 First and Second World War German military cemeteries. From the mid 1920s the private German war graves organization, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (VDK) and the newly established Official German Burial Service in Belgium began to renovate German cemeteries in Flanders. It contains the Statue of the Mourning Soldiers, a bronze statue of the four figures in this cemetery was created by the Munich sculptor Professor Emil Krieger.

The Sites Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery: is the resting place of 10,755 casualties of the First World War. It is the second largest British and Commonwealth cemetery in BelgiumIt contains the grave of Nellie Spindler who was a member of Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service Essex Farm Cemetry: There are 1,200 WW1 servicemen buried or commemorated in this cemetery. Of these burials 103 are not identified. There are special memorials commemorating 19 casualties who are known or believed to be buried among the unidentified burials. it contains Rifleman Valentine Joe Strudwick, Service Number 5750, serving with 8th Battalion The Rifle Brigade, who was aged 15 when he died on 14 January 1916. He is one of the youngest British casualties of the Great War to die in action. The location of Essex Farm Advanced Dressing Station (A.D.S.) is believed to be the place in May 1915 where the Canadian Army Doctor and artillery brigade commander Major John McCrae composed his now famous poem “In Flanders Fields”.