Oakham History Department

The History Department arranges visits to historical sites, workshops at leading museums, takes groups to lectures by important historians and has organised successful tours abroad. This blog gives news of any current excursions from Oakham...

You can find out more about History at Oakham by visiting the Department website.



Thursday, February 9, 2012

A busy first afternoon

Upon arrival in Arras on Tuesday, the students of Trip 2 spent the afternoon visiting the Wellington Quarry and the Memorial to the Missing located in Arras. 

The Quarry was a new addition to the trip and allowed us to explore some of the twelve miles of tunnels dug by special New Zealand forces brought in for their mining expertise. On our tour through the tunnels, we saw original markings from both WWI and WWII, when the tunnels were used as staging grounds to dig under No Man's Land and move closer to the front line without the Germans finding out.



At the Memorial to the Missing, we got our first taste of a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery, one of many dotted around the Somme that we were to visit over the course of our three days there. Everyone paid their respects as we noticed the different countries and regiments represented amongst the gravestones.





With those two visits done, we headed to check in at the hotel!

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