Gallipoli Association
As Sedbergh prepared for Remembrance Sunday we were honoured to receive a rare visit from the Gallipoli Association who came to speak to Year 11 pupils about the WW1 Gallipoli campaign.
Mike, Sophie and Tom from the Gallipoli Association led a tailored and moving workshop. The team spoke about the Association’s work surveying the battlefield sites and providing educational trips for young people. Their discussion about underage soldiers during the campaign was particularly poignant. The Year 11’s were shocked to hear that the youngest allied casualty of the Gallipoli campaign was Desire Blanco, a 13 year old French solider. The youngest British military casualty was Private Richard Scott who died on 13th June 1915 aged 15. He had claimed to be 17 when he enlisted.
The workshop was tailored to feature details of the 66 Sedberghians who served during the Gallipoli campaign, and the 27 who lost their lives, with information about the actions that Sedberghians were most closely involved with.
Mike gave a personal account of his great uncle, Private John Arthur Crane’s service and death during the campaign, and spoke about his personal pilgrimage trips to Gallipoli to honour and research Private Crane. As the workshop drew to a close Mike invited two pupils to participate in ‘blowing the whistle’, re-enacting a battlefield advance with an original artifact, a whistle that was used in 1915 during the campaign. After the formal end of the workshop pupils had the opportunity to view – and in some cases handle – guns, swords, munitions, medals and uniform used at Gallipoli. This final segment of the workshop was in keeping with the ethos of the whole event, structured to be engaging, shocking, surprising and deeply poignant. Staff and pupils were tremendously grateful to Mike, Sophie and Tom for the preparation, thought and great effort they had gone to in order to bring this special workshop to Sedbergh.