7am, 11th November 2004
I'm sat in a mini bus whilst the two leaders are paying for a parking ticket before we go for breakfast in a café. We have just been to the Menin gate for a look around before the service. I didn't sleep much on the way here, mainly because of the cold. Everyone in the mini-bus was cold and tired and there were a lot of moans as we got out. When we approached the gate everyone was deadly silent. I remember not feeling any emotion walking around the gate at first. There were names everywhere, I couldn't believe it. I was literally speechless. I found some steps and as I walked up them there were even more walls and walls of names, and the entire top of the gate was covered in names, my whole throat clogged up. I remember how when I looked over the edge I could feel tears in my eyes but for some reason they wouldn't come out. The service and parade will be amazing; I know already that I will be emotional.
One old homeless man kept watching us walking round the gate over and over again. It mustn't be as shocking and breathtaking seeing the gate everyday. When Dave R. opened this memorial box and showed me all these books and books of names, there were about 10 books all packed in as tight as they could be. I said to Dave are these the soldiers that battled, when he told me the name in these books were "just the ones that weren't found" my throat just closed up. I had no idea what to say. There were so many names. I thought that it looked a lot of names on the wall but in the books it seemed to be even more. I feel a large chill from the wind, which made me remember how cold I was when I first got out. I couldn't even think about being cold anymore, I could barely even think of anything…

1.55pm 11th November
At 8am this morning we were all sat in a small café waking ourselves up before the service. When we first arrived at St.Georges church I remember thinking how nice it was, very small and pretty. It was an English service and I think all of the congregation were English. Everyone was being nice to us asking where about we were from. It was a moving short service, it just felt like I was at a service in church at home, very welcoming and homey. I didn't actually cry during the last post in the church although I came very close. We only had a few minutes to wait before we joined the parade. It was different that I expected but again all seemed very friendly and a lot of the local people were smiling at us as we walked past.
When we were stood at the gate waiting for the 2nd service to start I remember just feeling incredibly cold. We were in uniform so I couldn't wear my jacket or scarf or even my hat. My feet and fingers had actually turned completely numb as the service began. I wasn't doing too bad crying wise until the last post was played. I could feel my eyes swelling up. But unlike my normal tears I didn't wipe them away, I wasn't ashamed of them. I let them run down my face and onto the ground as if showing my personal respect. As I expected it was very emotional bit I think that added the experience. The laying of the wreaths was interesting, the British Ambassador to Belgium was there, and that of Canada and so was the Ambassador of Australia. It felt like a privilege to be there with them.
When the poppy petals fell through the roof representing blood the tears started again. They were so beautiful but they represented such an awful thing. They fell from the sky dancing in the wind.
Afterwards we walked to the town for lunch. Those past few hours were possibly the coldest, emotional but defiantly memorable hours of my life.

10pm 11th November
I'm finally warm in my bed. I just tried to play on Cheryl's Nintendo and drastically failed. This afternoon has been emotional, confusing but I'll never forget it. When I heard about Poelcappelle I just imagined it to be a graveyard really. When I got there I didn't know what to say. There were thousands of graves one after each other, and this was only one graveyard, I started to realise properly just how many people died in this war. I always knew that millions did but when you see them all it really hits you properly.
I found my great great uncle's grave. My grandma's cross, which she had put down months ago, was still there and I added my poppy next to it. It was strange thinking that one of my blood relatives, some of my DNA, was in the ground beneath me. As I walked round I noticed a lot of graves with "unknown soldier" on them, this is because they haven't found found enough of them to identify them. Everyone just fell silent at a grave we found of a 14 year old year old boy, J.Condon. Later we read in the book that he was in fact 13, but it was 10 days to his 14th birthday. This is when I realised he would have been in year 9!! He wouldn't have been able to join explorer scouts yet. Everyone was emotional at this grave but I was just so shocked no tears were coming out. I just kept thinking this 13 yr old boy with no practise thinking he was in-destructible was going against up to 60 yr old men with years and years of experience. He never really stood a chance but he didn't care.
By this time my fingers were hurting and very painful due to the cold. By the time I was writing in the visitor's book I couldn't hold the pen. I had no feeling to grasp it. I was interested to find a couple of Jewish graves. Instead on a cross on the front like the others they had the Jewish star on it. This made me wonder did they know these soldiers were Jewish when they were fighting or did they have to hide it. Everyone left the English grave feeling very upset and it was almost silent on the way to the German grave yard. These graves seemed a bit more depressing. They were just black rectangles of stone in the ground. All of the crosses and statues were black as well. I felt bad as I walked around knowing that a lot of these soldiers were forced to fight against us without even wanting to. There was a small wreathe with a card saying that we must remember them as well, they were told to fight by their leader so they had to.
The two graves we visited were both breathtaking and emotional. Although I couldn't feel a thing in my hands, feet or face I was feeling lot inside.

7.05pm 12th November
Today has been a very strange but good day. We went to a lot of different war graves all day. Most of them were huge. Some of them had walls of names of people missing. I kept thinking some of these names might be soldiers buried with "unknown solider" on the grave stone. One place where Gassy had a relative's name on the wall had 3,700 graves/memorials in it! It really puts into perspective how many people died. We went to the Somme version of the Menin gate. This had a graveyard with it at the back. It was in a park and was absolutely huge. I didn't want to work out the number of people remembered here. We visited some French graves and we drove past some Canadians, Indian and even Chinese graveyards.
At the Theipval Memorial, a French new channel were there and wanted to talk to is. They filmed me, Cheryl, Gassy, Ash and Dave.J.. They talked and interviewed the leaders Dave.R. And Dick. The most emotional place for me which we visited today was Mur Des Fusilles this was a Second World War citadel it was where 218 people were taken, tortured for information, tied to poles and then shot. Men and Woman! Dave.R. said something which turned my heart to ice, "Battlefields are battlefields, and this is cold murder. This is torched you, break your bones, shoot you dead cold blooded murder". I felt paralyzed. To tell the truth I didn't really know what it was at first but this basically told me straight what it was. Which I preferred as there isn't any point in sugar coating something like this. I wasn't crying yet as my body was struck cold. As I walked round I couldn't help but cry when I read that their jobs were things like electricians and college lecturers, normal people like you and me. In the walls there were metal doors and on the way out we found one open. I and a couple others went in and they were just long black tunnels. This is when the thought struck me that this may have been where they kept the prisoners. This thought terrified my and I had to get out of there. I wasn't sure of this was true but the idea haunted me all the ride back to Ypres.

12.05pm 13th November.
We are just driving away from Hill 62 and sanctuary wood. When I first walked in it just looked like a café and small room of photographs which I was being charged 6 euros to go in. But looking back now I would have happily paid more as this is one of the places that I will never forget. There were about 12 different machines which showed old fashioned black and white war photographs. Some were of old buildings and trenches but some were of dead bodies and horrifying sights that I still and will see for a few days to come whenever I close my eyes, one picture was so shocking that I had to stop myself from throwing up! As I carried on walking round I went outside and just stood there for 5 minutes staring at what was in front of me. Holes in the ground everywhere, ruined buildings, old machinery and tunnels and tunnels of trenches. As I walked round I couldn't help but picture the men lying in the trenches and in the back of my mind I could here bombs and explosions. My stomach was just churning and I started to feel physically sick.
There was a tunnel underground and as soon as I went inside it I felt as if I could throw up there and then so I had to get out. I went back inside for a while but I couldn't get the pictures out of my head. Before I faced going back outside I was looking at the photos on the wall of just ruins. I realised these ruins were some of the places I was walking around just the day before. This building didn't make me feel emotional or upset more than physically sick when you see the conditions they had to live it for months and months, and I couldn't stay in there for even 15 minutes!

9.15pm 13th November
I'm in my room with Cheryl and soon we are going to go down for a drink with the others. After we were at the trenches we went to Tyne-cot cemetery. This is the biggest cemetery in the Europe and it's just breathtaking. I think Gassy said there were 12,000 graves and around 36,000 names on the walls. As you walk around you can't believe there is so many, and the same thought was going through my mind, this is just one graveyard. There are hundreds of graveyards this is just one. There were some very heartfelt notes left on graves. We noticed there were stones on top of the Jewish graves, and after ringing Dick's sister in Switzerland we found out this is an old tradition going back to when they had to do this to stop animals from getting to the body in the deserts.
After Tyne Cot we went to St.Georges church again, this time for a proper look. I saw the plaque on the wall for the machine gun corps which my grandma had told me about, and I felt proud knowing that I had a relative in this historic group of soldiers. Next we moved onto the Flanders field museum. This was interesting more than anything. You could read plaques about Christmas during the war. There were lots of old war equipment including a small room for gas masks and it had a soldier reading out a poem in the background describing watching his friend die from gas poisoning. There was another small room which showed a black and white 10 minute long film. This showed soldiers being killed by each other and enemies. It had images of soldiers trying to make their way through walls of barbed wire. These images will stick with me for a while, haunting me. They were like the photographs I had seen earlier that day,
It showed a Belgium being shot by his own troops but it didn't actually show the death, you just heard the gun shot which is worse for me because it leaves you to your imagination.
After this we walked round the shops for a while and went out for tea in a local restaurant. Next we moved onto the 8pm last post. I expected to be very emotional but I wasn't as bad as I imagined. I think this is because it was so busy it looked like a tourist attraction, and its not, it's the Menin gate. But it was effective and emotional hearing the last post in the darkness. I didn't like it although when people clapped when it had finished. You clap at shows, not at the last post. It was good and emotional but Id like to go again when it's less busy.

This war (The Great War) was everybody's fault, and was nobody's fault. It was not a struggle of good against bad, but a struggle of armies deployed as the result of a series of blunders.

Thus, when we say that we are 'proud' or 'grateful' for the sacrifice made by the soldiers of the Great War, we should be careful what we mean. These men did NOT die for freedom, or peace, or a greater good.

They died as a result of competition between nations, which had escalated beyond reason. The war began as the result of fear, brinkmanship and a race for power (not to mention some gargantuan errors of judgement).

This, though, should not detract from the sacrifice that they made - men on all sides certainly believed that they were fighting for freedom and peace, and they should be honoured for making the sacrifice they made for what they believed was a noble cause. In reality, they were the victims of a dupe.

People today ask why we hold remembrance services, as few of us now know those who fought. What, they ask, are we remembering? How are such ceremonies relevant, particularly to the youth of today? To this, we ought to point out that the wrong question is being asked.

The Great War, and remembering this war, is of course relevant. Not, though, because we remember those we knew and who fell, but because it is forever imperative that we keep the events of the Great War in our minds, to prevent such events from re-occurring.

The question we ought to ask is, rather, 'Why do people of today fail to recognise the relevance of the war, of remembrance services, and fail to respond to the lessons it taught us?'

Fail to respond we do - despite the lessons of the war, we continue in the same vein. People have died as a result of armed conflict somewhere in the world every day since 11th November 1918. True, there have been few wars on the same scale as the Great War, but this is due to a change in the nature and methods of armed conflict, not to a change in our attitudes.

That is why, when I walked among the war graves in Belgium, my overwhelming feeling was not one of pride, or gratitude. Rather, in addition to pity for those who fell in the war, I felt in the main a mixture of sheepishness and embarrassment, as if those under the ground were remonstrating with all their might:- 'We made this sacrifice, and died needlessly. When will you ever learn?'

In my opinion, the only way to give real meaning to the deaths of all those who fell in the Great War is to take heed of the lesson offered, and to strive, in whatever way is available to us, to avoid conflict and hatred between people, nations and religions.