Wellington remembers – those lost in battle

The concept and tradition of remembrance, and of honouring of the dead, is certainly not alien to China. Every year, across the entire country, families gather during the Qingming Festival to pay their respects to lost ancestors, and sometimes to visit their graves to sweep them clean. A hint as to the longevity of this tradition in Chinese culture can be seen in this section of the famous 12th century scroll by Zhang Zeduan, showing the scene in Kaifeng, capital of the Song Dynasty, during Qingming.

Formal remembrance in British culture may be a more recent thing, but it is no less deeply rooted, especially for members of the Wellington family. On Friday 23rd November, all pupils from Year 3 upwards gathered for our second annual Remembrance Assembly. The ideal date for this – 11th of November, to coincide with the end of World War 1 – was impossible as it was both a Sunday and a school holiday, and because many students were away on the History Trip to Europe, itself something of direct relevance to our remembrance.

Wellington UK’s very foundation is of course closely tied to those who gave their lives in the service of their country. Wellington was set up to educate the sons of soldiers killed in action – the heroum filii, or sons of heroes immortalized in the College crest. Inevitably, with such a strong military foundation, many pupils left Wellington to join the armed forces, and thus when Europe descended twice into the chaos of war in the 20th Century, many Old Wellingtonians (OW’s) were sent into battle. Over 1,200 of them lost their lives in the two World Wars; only two schools in the whole of the UK lost more ex-pupils than Wellington.

In our Remembrance Assembly, these Wellington losses were poignantly illustrated by showing the lists naming the fallen from the Blucher, Orange, Stanley & Wellesley, and photos of some of those men. We also watched a video made recently in which 707 current Wellington UK pupils – the same number as the OWs killed in WW1 – lay down on the ground in Front Quad to help illustrate the scale of the sacrifice, as well as the youth of many of those killed. These pupils were able to get up and walk away – their peers nearly 100 years previously were not.

There were excellent pupil contributions from Year 6, with poetry readings by Nicole Choi and Shubin Kim, who read “My Boy Jack”, about the death in WW1 of Rudyard Kipling’s son, who was an OW, and Christina Su and Sophie Cook, whose rendition of “In Flanders Fields” tied in neatly with the great work they had done to spread Remembrance Poppies around the school, and their explanation of why poppies have become so associated with remembrance. We also heard extracts from the novels War Horse, by Sofie Axen, and from Birdsong (written by OW Sebastian Faulks) by Lucian Jackson.

The Heads of House in the Senior School all read poems: Sungbae Yun – “The Bohemians” (Ivor Gurney), Mike Yoon – “The Dug-Out” (Siegfried Sassoon), Felix Fowler – “Anthem for Doomed Youth” (Wilfred Owen) and Kimberley Tennant-Green – “The Falling Leaves” (Margaret Postgate Cole). These were wonderful contributions, and artfully punctuated by some beautiful musical pieces. Mr Becko and the Wind Band played “I vow to thee my country” from Holst’s Planets Suite, while Mr Griffiths was joined on stage by Bill Zhang from Year 8 and Wellington UK intern Miss King to play a Remembrance favourite, “Nimrod”, by Edward Elgar.

With the History Trip so recently returned from Europe, having visited some pivotal places redolent with the legacy of war, it was a unique opportunity for some of the staff and students to offer their own reflections on remembrance. Our new History teacher Mr Macleod delivered a formidably good presentation on the Tragedy of the Berlin Wall, aided by an outstanding and very personal perspective from Konstantin Chakos. The Master followed with Ada Chen, Mike Yoon and Jamie Cook to recall the harrowing details of what took place at Auschwitz in Poland, in what is arguably the twentieth century’s darkest hour.