Resources required

• Resource I: The Future of the Battlefields
• Resource J: Commemoration
• Resource K: The War Artist
• Resource L: Using Memorials as evidence – Focus Questions
• Resource N: Additional Resources

Rationale and learning intentions

The focus of this enquiry is to encourage pupils to link the events of the past with the attitudes of today.  They should consider the evidence available to us through memorials, archaeology, photographs, art etc and how our understanding affects our attitudes to commemoration and remembrance.

Using the information they have gathered during Enquiries 1 & 2 pupils are asked to consider whether or not Ypres is still important today.  They then examine why so many people, particularly students, visit the Menin Gate today and what can be learnt from the site, using the memorial as a source of evidence.  Another source of evidence is the battlefield itself.  The proposed extension to the A19 motorway and the archaeology that has been revealed provides another subject for debate.

The final activity encourages pupils to consider all the elements covered in the 3 enquiries and provides a focus for their own interpretations of commemoration and remembrance.

‘A more sacred place for the British race does not exist in the world.’ To what extent do you agree with Winston Churchill’s comment about Ypres?    Winston Churchill once argued that ‘A more sacred place for the British race does not exist in the world’. During the inter-war period novels, films, plays, poems, music, paintings and cartoons kept the First World War at the forefront of peoples’ minds.  Where do people today gain their impressions of the First World War from? Is it from history books or is it from novels, poetry, paintings (Resource K), films and documentaries? Pupils reflect on whether Ypres is still of such great significance today.  Pupils should explore different criteria for assessing significance before developing their own ‘significance test’ and applying it to Ypres. 

Why do so many schools visit the Menin Gate and attend the Last Post Ceremony?  Every year thousands travel to the battlefields of the Western Front. Today’s visitors do not see what the soldiers who fought there saw. They see the war memorials and cemeteries designed by architects such as Sir Reginald Blomfield and Sir Edwin Lutyens.  What impact do these cemeteries and memorials have on the way that the First World War is remembered today?  (Resource J)

Pupils investigate why so many schools and other visitors still visit the Menin Gate and the First World War battlefields.

As a starting point pupils should explore the usefulness of the Menin Gate as a historical site – What can it tell us about the soldiers who fought in the First World War? 

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s web-site (www.cwgc.org) enables pupils to find out more about the soldiers whose names appear on the Menin Gate and those buried in surrounding cemeteries. A database can be established which allows pupils to draw some tentative conclusions about the age and nationality of the soldiers who fought and periods during the war when casualty rates were high.  Resource L helps pupils structure their investigation.  There are 54,568 names in the CWGC cemetery reports for the Menin Gate.  These are listed alphabetically, divided into groups e.g. A-D with 20 records per page.  Pupils can be divided into groups and allocated a set number of pages for different surname letters.

Pupils can then go on to explore why so many people still visit Ypres, the Menin Gate and attend the Last Post Ceremony. Pupils could carry out interviews with people who have attended or use the Visitors Books on site. They could also e-mail other schools and travel companies in order to establish and prioritise reasons why visits to sites such as the Menin Gate remain very popular.

Pupils should be encouraged to think about what the high numbers of people who visit sites connected to the First and Second World Wars tells us about our society. Why is there so much interest in the First World War for example whilst public/media interest in more recent conflicts such as the Korean War or the Falklands is nowhere near so great? 

Why does Ypres find itself at the centre of a new debate today?  

Pupils explore the controversy surrounding the threat to the historic Ypres battlefields from modern industrial expansion (one of the proposed routes for the extension of the A 19 motorway cuts through 7km of the Ypres battlefield).

Pupils use Resource I and the web link to the Association for World War Archaeology (A.W.A.) to explore the significance of the site. They should consider the situation from different viewpoints e.g. a relative of a soldier killed near Ypres, a local farmer, an historian, the owner of a business in Belgium. Pupils write a letter to the Belgian government explaining why they believe the motorway should/should not be built and/or if it is/is not important to find an alternative route for the motorway. 

What purpose should a war memorial serve? Pupils decide how they will commemorate soldiers who died in the Ypres Salient (or alternatively ex pupils of the school, family members or local people who were killed in the First World War or other more recent conflicts).  They should discuss what they are trying to achieve; this can lead into a broader discussion about the purpose of war memorials and the nature of commemoration.

They design their own memorial or service.  They may wish to consider a traditional memorial or service but alternative options include artwork, prose, poetry, drama or horticulture.  Discussion should focus on how appropriate their design would be for a memorial that commemorates the chosen group of soldiers.  Would their design

• have been considered appropriate at the time of the death of the soldiers?
• be considered appropriate by relatives still alive today?
• fulfill the function of commemoration today?
• enable commemoration to be continued into the future?
• ensure the individuals it commemorates are actively remembered?