ON the 27th September 2010, 23 intrepid students and three fearless teachers set off from The Commonweal School at the inhumane hour of 4am, embarking on a journey to a strange and wonderful land. . . France.
OK, it may not have been so dramatic after all, but the trip to the Battlefields of the First World War certainly was a trip to remember, and the fact that our very own Swindon soldiers travelled the same roads almost 100 years ago gave it an authentic twist of its own.
The intrepidation began last summer, with the research of a number of different First World War soldiers from Swindon.
Ours, Sapper Harry Asher Southwell (pictured), of the Royal Engineers, had an interesting history, his father being secretary to the GWR Mechanics' Institute at the time, a well-known figure across Swindon. Harry himself was a fitter and turner in the Locomotive Department in Swindon.
Harry was recruited to the Army, in the company of the Royal Engineers, around 1914, but a few months later he died, aged just 21, having been wounded at Ypres on July 13, 1915.
The trip to the First World War Battlefields took us to visit, amongst much else, his grave in Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery; just to see the sheer size of the cemetery was enough to show us the scale of this devastating event.
During the trip, we visited museums, memorials, trenches, and both British and German cemeteries.
To think that Swindon's soldiers had walked where we were walking, seen what we could see and felt the same as we felt, and that they had finally met their untimely ends here was at first difficult to grasp, but as the reality sunk in, appreciation and gratitude naturally followed.
Perhaps one of the most intriguing places of all the battlefields was the Thiepval Memorial.
Dedicated to the 72,500 men who died in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and whose bodies were never found, the memorial is the largest of its kind in the world.
A morning spent admiring the grand structure, and taking in the sheer loss of lives from just five months of the war, was a morning that went far too quickly, and I would have willingly stayed, if only to fully appreciate what has been done for us, and for Swindon.
The trip held all kinds of feelings for us, from the shock of the losses to the gratitude felt; the astonishment of the magnificent structures around us to the sobering memory of the deceased.
Even a visit to Langemark, the controversial German cemetery, was certainly very memorable.
Drew Grimes, a student who visited the First World War battlefields, said: "I really enjoyed the trip. I was surprised to see the scale of the cemeteries, and the memory of Swindon's soldiers kept me intrigued.
"It feels almost as if I knew these soldiers, the trip was so real to all of us."
The trip really opened our eyes to the sacrifice of the war, especially because of Swindon's contribution, and it shall never be forgotten. In the words of an epitaph in Delville Wood Cemetery: "Sunshine passes, shadows fall, but love and remembrance outlast all."
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