In November 2014, my parents and I travelled
to France to visit the WWI battlefields.
We specifically wanted to see the
Beaumont Hamel site because my parents are from Newfoundland. When we arrived
we stayed in Paris for a couple of nights and toured the Louvre and the Eiffel
Tower. Then we took a train to Arras where we met our guide Richard. Richard was a British marine and spy!! He
took us to Beaumont Hamel, Vimy Ridge and a few other battle sites. We even had
lunch at a castle! Richard knows a lot about WWI so we learned a lot. At
Beaumont Hamel, we learned about the battle on July 1, 1916 when most of the NL
Regiment was killed. There is a famous tree there called the Danger Tree where
a lot of the men died. We also learned a lot about what the life of a soldier
would have been like then. The trenches there are the same trenches that the
soldiers lived in. The next day we drove to Belgium to see the Menin Gate Memorial and in the afternoon I visited a Sacred Heart school in France.
On Remembrance Day, we went back to Beaumont Hamel by ourselves for the
ceremony. They sang O Canada and the Ode
to Newfoundland and then read a letter from a soldier home to his mother the
day before he died. Mom cried and I think Dad did too. We met a group who were
visiting from Memorial University and some of them found the graves of their
relatives. I thought it was really cool that most of the people working there
were Canadian university students.
written by Emma Hamlyn, Gr. 6C
Thank you for sharing this with us, Emma. Well done!
