WORLD WAR ONE BATTLEFIELD TOUR

I did actually manage one trip away in my early to mid 20s that was educational, informative and didn't involve the consumption of crazy amounts of alcohol. Dad had been on a trip to France to visit the old World war one battlefields in the early 1980s with the gun club. He was named after a relative who had been killed in the battle of the somme. A few years before this trip he had gone back with Great uncle Alan who had also located of the grave of Owen Fray. (my mums,mums,mums brother) Hard to believe I was 26 years old before I had even been to France. It was an organized coach trip picking us up in Leicester and going to our hotel in Lille via the ferry and a stop off in a big hyper market. The first night was just settling in the tour didn't start proper until the following day. As expected I was one of only of a few there under the age of 50. Dad in a German war cemetry, all the grave stones were black and lay flat on the floor. Myself at the "danger tree" , obviously there was loads of sites that couldn't be covered on a bus trip of a few days but I got the idea that we covered the main areas. At Vimy Ridge and Newfoundland memorial you got an idea of the scale of what that war was like. It was not just the number of names and graves but the ages on them. About 90% of them were younger than I was at the time. We stopped off at one small place to see the grave of one that was aged 15. Dads namesake didn't have an actual grave but was named on the inside wall at Thiepval. At Albert we stopped off for food and drink before heading to Peronne and the Museum. Everyone complained about the video we watched as the quality was so bad it was almost unviewable. After a long day it was back to the hotel for a rest. In the bar at night most of the others on the trip were from Scotland. Dad did his bit for England/Scotland relations by asking "does your country still have a football team ?" which didn't go down too well. On the last full day it was back on the bus to Passchendale,  Sanctuary wood and Tyne cot . Here uncle Alan pointed out the number of British people killed in wars in my lifetime would be lost in a small corner of this cemetry. Finally it was on to Ypres and the Menin gate for the last post. A short speech/reading was given by Arthur Halestrap  one of the last few soldiers still alive then from WW1. According to his wiki page he died a few months later so we were lucky to be able to see him. Uncle Alan with his never ending bowl of mussles. The man next to him was from our tour group and an expert on WW1. During the trip I was asked several times by the older people how much of all this I had learned about at school. The answer was simple "none" not even the dates. All we learned about in school was ancient history such as the battle of Hastings or how stonehenge was built. http://www.politicallyincorrect.me.uk/rewritehistory.htm A quote from the above page "In the pages of a history book, however, most of us would expect Britain’s role in the years 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 to at least warrant a mention. But in a work for schools produced by Brussels, there is no reference to World War I or World War II in the section on Britain. The glaring omission consigns key events such as the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, Dunkirk and D-Day to the dustbin. And, in a move seen as rewriting history for the sake of Euro-friendliness, it erases the pivotal role Britain played in shaping the future of Europe. Nothing of note is recorded as happening in Britain early in the 20th century, with the Great War conspicuous by its absence. Again, nothing significant is marked between 1931, when the author notes the Commonwealth was created, and 1947, when Britain pulled out of India. World War II is not mentioned – although it does feature in sections on many other countries in the book. In the section on Germany, meanwhile, the word Nazi is not mentioned. Instead, it is merely noted that 1929 saw ‘a surge in extremist movements’ and that in 1933 Hitler became chancellor. The book Histoires de l’Europe Volume 1 was produced by the European parliament’s Office of Information. About 10,000 copies have been distributed to Belgian children aged 16 to 18. There was incredulity at its omissions. Historian Dr David Starkey said: ‘The jaw drops. Only one country resisted Germany in 1939-40 and it is important that country is mentioned. And World War I is one of the central events in British domestic history.‘What this must seem to suggest is that Britain decided not to take part in either of the two European conflicts of the 20th century, in which case the outcome of those conflicts would have been somewhat different, to put it mildly.’ The book allocates four pages to each of the 28 members and prospective members of the EU. But Dr Starkey said: ‘It’s ludicrous that we should get the same as somewhere like Estonia. The whole history of Scotland warrants only one and-a-half lines.‘This tidying up of history is an indication of a move towards greater European unity. It’s airbrushing.’ Chris Heaton-Harris, Tory MEP for the East Midlands, said: ‘For World War I and II not to get a mention is bizarre. I think it’s part of an agenda within Belgian society nowadays to have as little as possible to do with the Brits or the Americans. It’s sad, because if it were not for those two groups of people it would have been a very different picture on the Continent for the last 60 years.’ Robert Whelan, of think tank Civitas, said omitting World War I made any claim that the book is a history of Britain ‘ridiculous’. A spokesman for the Belgian section of the European parliament’s Office of Information, said: ‘Everyone knows about World War II so we didn’t think it was necessary to put it in."