BROMYARD teenager Thomas Woodyatt wasn’t much older than Siobhan Hill and Richard Webb when he was lost to the last months of World War One.

Siobhan and Richard went to the Commonwealth war grave, close by the battlefields of Ypres, as representatives of Bromyard’s Queen Elizabeth Humanities College.

The two Year students admit to being “awestruck” by the number of graves they saw at Tyne Cot alone.

That of Private Thomas Frederick Woodyatt, aged 18, from Bromyard, made their awe all the more poignant.

The pair, and their teacher, were on First World War battlefield tour of Belgium and northern France d battlefield tour in Belgium and Northern France run by UCL Institute of Education (IOE) and Equity, school tour provider.

The First World War Centenary Battlefield Tours Programme, funded by the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government, is designed to help teachers and students from every secondary state-funded school in England to develop a deeper understanding of the Great War.

Students from QE as well as 15 other schools joined the four-day accompanied tour, during which they attended one of the every night of the year a Last Post ceremonies under Menin Gate, Ypres.

The group also visited museums, battlefield sites, memorials and cemeteries.

Jo Tyler, QE History Teacher, said: “The centenary project has provided students and teachers with a wonderful and perhaps once in a lifetime opportunity. Many students or staff may never return to these places; others may make pilgrimages with their families. The act of remembrance is just as important for people to make a hundred years on; to realise the loss and tragedy that war can bring and the effect on a nation.”