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4th December 2014

On Friday 21st November History students took part in a First World War Day.  Over hundred AS and A2 students went to special sessions run by Kevin Hicks of the History Squad. 

WW1 History Research Display

WW1 History Research Display

Kevin, a veteran from the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, ran re-anacting sessions with the students demonstrating the weapons, equipment and conditions ordinary Tommies would have experienced in 1914 - from the moment they volunteered to “going over the top” on the Western Front. 

Kevin brought History and the Western Front into the classroom and teachers and students were totally engaged and moved. Meanwhile 20 other History students turned detective and tried to trace the identities behind the 23 initials and surnames on the College’s War Memorial for St Brendan’s Boys who died in the First World War.  In just a few short hours the students, assisted by their teachers and local military historian Jeremy Banning and English Heritage researcher Michael Gorely managed to trace over half of the boys’ full names and their tragic fates. 

At the end of the day the student’s exhibition of their findings was opened officially by the College’s Vice Principal and by a former old boy Denis Wright who lit a candle of remembrance while John Lux the College Chaplain said some brief prayers and students read accounts of the boys who had been traced.

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