Caroline takes a journey into the past

Wallace High School student, 16-year-old Caroline Simpson, has been stepping into the past with a journey of discovery around some of the World War I battlefields of Belgium and France.

History came starkly to life for the Lisburn Air Cadet as, together with cadets from across the region, she visited landmarks along what was once The Western Front, the principal theatre of war from 1914-18, and learned about the unprecedented loss of life in ‘the war to end all wars’.

It was an intensely moving learning experience, as Colonel David McCleery from the Army Cadet Force Association explained: “Many of our Cadets have studied World War I at school so they were already quite knowledgeable, but it’s one thing reading about World War I in a history book but quite another to make the Battlefield Tour pilgrimage. I think we were all rather overwhelmed as we visited the trenches where so many men fought and died, then saw the sombre rows of headstones in the region’s many military cemeteries.”

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