Remembrance Day 2018
To mark one hundred years since the end of the First World War, South Hampstead pupils and staff held remembrance assemblies in both the Junior and Senior Schools last week, culminating with a beautiful evening performance of poetry and music at Christ Church in Hampstead.
On Friday 9th November, the History, English and Music departments coordinated a special remembrance assembly at the Senior School. The Chamber Choir, led by Miss Ellis, set the tone with their moving performance of Alexander Tilley’s choral setting of John McCrae’s poem, ‘In Flanders Fields.‘ It is from McCrae’s poem that we take the blood-red poppy as our symbol of remembrance. Spoken from the point of view of the dead to the living, the poem calls on us to remember their sacrifice and continue to fight for their cause.
Mrs Morgan then explained the focus of the Battlefields Trip, which the History Department has led to the Western Front annually for the last twenty years. Katie and Milly, in Year 10, recalled two of the most poignant aspects of the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1st July 1916. Katie reminded us of the bravery of the men of the volunteer Pals Battalions who sustained huge losses as they went into action that morning, while Milly described the heroism of those men who are buried in the Devonshire Trench Cemetery. Our assembly then compared the events of the Somme 1916 with the Hundred Days Offensive, 1918, which brought an end to the war, whose centenary we are marking this year. Many of the lessons of the Somme were applied to achieve a successful breakthrough, though still at great human cost.
One soldier who served in the Hundred Days Offensive was war poet, Wilfred Owen. Eleanor, Year 10, offered a powerful reading of one of Owen’s best known poems, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. The poem describes the horrific effects of a gas attack and challenges an idea expressed by Roman poet Horace: ‘Dulce et Decorum Est pro patria mori’: it is sweet and honourable to die for one’s country.
Mr Larochelle continued Owen’s story, referring to his final days in France before being killed on the 4th of November, 1918. Only a few days earlier, Owen wrote a tender, reassuring letter to his mother, ensuring her he was leading ‘a great life’ and was oblivious to ‘the ghastly glimmering of the guns outside & the hollow crashing of the shells.’ Four days later, Owen was killed, just one week before the war’s end. As the church bells in Shrewsbury rang out celebrating the news of armistice on the 11th of November, Owen’s mother received a telegram informing her of her son’s death. Mrs Morgan then led the school’s minute of silence with the words of Laurence Binyon. Our minute’s silence and our assembly were brought to a close by a beautiful playing of the Last Post by Alice, one of our talented Music Scholars.
Earlier in the week, pupils paid tribute to all the women who contributed to the war efforts with a minute’s silence at the Broadway Theatre in Barking. ‘Songs of Empowerment’, an evening of music and dramatic performance, was our inaugural event in partnership with Eastbury Community School, and a powerful celebration of the suffrage centenary. During the First World War, pupils at South Hampstead High School knitted hundreds of pairs of socks, mufflers, caps and mittens for troops as well as making bandages, slippers and blankets for hospitals. According to a wartime school magazine, a formidable list of war-work was undertaken by the school, including the despatch of parcels to prisoners of war, even though its numbers were considerably reduced by the fact that many had been removed from the area for fear of the zeppelin raids. South Hampstead was also an active member of the Patriotic Union, whose object was to coordinate the charitable efforts of many different schools. Many of our sister schools across the GDST played a significant role in the war effort too.
On Sunday 11th November, the Chamber Choir, Chamber Orchestra and Senior Choir paid tribute with a moving evening of musical performance at Christ Church in Hampstead, complemented by beautiful readings from Mrs Bingham and a number of pupils – a week to remember, in more ways than one.