History School Trips - Accompanied WWI Medicine & Surgery on the Western Front

On Ypres school trips, students can visit this fascinating site near the original front lines, featuring well-preserved British trenches, covered passageways, and a section of the underground tunnel system. The museum consists of two rooms housing many artefacts removed from the battlefields plus a large and rare collection of three dimensional photo images inside special viewing boxes.

Students can explore the Museum Hooge Crater, offering a unique tour with original artefacts and full-scale reconstructions of battlefield scenes. A visit to the trenches showcases a German and British trench in their exact original position, as they were between April and July 1915.

The museum also boasts an extensive collection of weapons from 1914-18, along with war equipment from all the armies involved in the intense battles of those years. Photos and other historical displays make this museum a true must-see for anyone studying World War I.

Probably most famous because of the connection between the preserved British bunker and the Canadian poet, John McCrae, this cemetery and the nearby canal bank, formerly the British Front Line, are also well worth visiting.

The remains of two of the mines blown up at the beginning of the Battle of Messines lie here. The preserved battlefield around the Hill 60 crater bears witness to the ferocity of the fighting around this vantage point, which changed hands on several occasions.

The story of the cemetery - the largest hospital cemetery in the Ypres Salient area with almost 11,000 victims, representing 30 nationalities - is told in this new visitor centre. The exhibition includes a photo and listening wall where stories from the war can be discovered.

The largest and the most important of the British memorials to the Missing in The Salient, The Menin Gate holds the names of 54,896 soldiers of the British Empire. This memorial marked the start of one of the main roads out of Ypres towards the Front Line. Following a meal at a local restaurant, your students will witness the moving ‘Last Post Ceremony’ which takes place every evening at 8pm.

The Sunken Lane was a lane running in a north-south direction and situated in No Mans Land, halfway between the opposing front lines west of Beaumont Hamel village until the battle moved beyond the village in November 1916. 

From the outbreak of the war to the summer of 1915, this part of the front was held by French troops, who began the military cemetery in June 1915. It continued to be used by Commonwealth field ambulances and fighting units until early 1917.

Constructed of Accrington brick, this striking and relatively recent memorial commemorates one of the best known of the Pals Battalions. It stands in a park dedicated to The Sheffield City Battalion which contains traces of the front line trenches, from which both battalions attacked on 1st July 1916.

Undoubtedly one of the largest and best-preserved trench memorials on the Western Front. Just outside the park lies Hawthorn Crater, and within it are the ‘Danger Tree’ and remains of the British Front Line. The German Front Line can be seen across No Man’s Land. 

This is the largest memorial to the British missing on the Western Front, containing the names of over 73,000 men who died in the Somme section before 20th March 1918 and have no known graves. The visitor centre houses an informative exhibition designed to aid understanding of the history of Thiepval during WWI.

This fascinating museum has been created within a section of tunnels dug by the British Army during WWI. It gives groups on Somme school trips the opportunity to visit the underground network which played a key part in the Battle of Arras. Your students will descend 20 metres in a glass lift to take a guided tour. A great alternative to Vimy Ridge which can get booked up very early.

Opened in 2018, the bare concrete walls of this museum have been designed to resemble those of a bunker on the Hindenburg Line, the formidable system of German defences attacked by more than 400 tanks in November 1917. The remains of an original tank - 'Deborah' - are housed in the museum. Displayed with her are objects belonging to the soldiers, airmen, and nurses who served in this part of Northern France during the First World War.