Kid B

They were the best of kids, they were the worst of kids.
I said that I wanted to write more about Austen's Battlefields trip but in order to try to convey the impact, I want to try and get across what Mayhem kids can be like.

I had left the TV on, a new show on BBC Canada was playing. The premise seemed to be that two families who didn't know each other would go on holiday together, each would organise a week according to their own taste.
Both families seemed to have a working class background, but the dad in family A seemed to be or had been a police officer and the family had an interest in military history and re-enactments. Since I wasn't really watching at first, I didn't get what either of the parents in family B did.

Family B took them to the Algarve. They bagged the best accommodation in the self-catering apartment. Family B organised things to do in the day and would tell Family A when to get up and then wouldn't get up at all. The kids in family B seemed to be something like 12 and 8. Their parents exercised no parental control over them, the whole family spent an entire shopping expedition seeking out alcohol, which the two boys then fought over, trips to the beach always resulted in horrible anti-social behaviour and they only ate junk food.
Throughout this, Family A suffered stoically, being oh so very British about it, but they whispered their frustrations to the camera.

Then both families went on family A's choice. This was admittedly boring for family B, since it was a carefully planned tour of the Battlefields of some long forgotten war. Dad A tried patiently to include boys B in his explanations, but whenever they weren't directly being addressed they messed about, threw and destroyed things and complained that family A thought they were too thick to understand any of it. Mum B behaved like a bored schoolchild, and very theatrically too, the whole time. The only time they were engaged was when they were allowed to dress up in the clothes of the historic period.

At the end, mum B told the camera she thought that children A were scared of their dad, even though there had been no indication whatsoever of this in the show. The children of both families seemed in fact to espouse the values of their parents, it was just that parents A had better ones - in my value judgement you understand.

At Mayhem, I taught some of the best kids I had ever taught, these were like the kids in family A, but the majority of kids and their parents, were just like the ones in family B, so consider now, taking them to Belgium to see the Battlefields of WW1.

Austen's schoolgroup, you may remember, had suffered the full attention of customs, every child had been scanned, the coach closely inspected and only a Pompey football shirt had saved them.

When they finally arrived in Calais and driven across the top of France to Belgium, the two drivers were still muttering gloom and doom, but the courier was now on centre stage and was much more positive.

The first thing that shocked Austen when they got to the area, was the frequency of cemeteries, with their neat little rows of white military crosses. They were taken into one. The first time the kids were shocked into thinking was when they stopped at the grave of a fifteen year-old boy. The courier pointed out that at fifteen, he was no conscript, he had deliberately deceived the authorities and signed up because he wanted to give his life for his country and its ideals. The children were stunned into silence.

When they arrived at what had been the front line, the kids were allowed to stand in a trench so that they could experience the claustrophobia of it. They were shown the fields of operation behind the front line, the place where the wounded would have been taken for first aid, then the more seriously wounded, further back, and eventually the small room where the doctor treated the dying. Behind it, the mortuary. Every soldier who was treated in that room entered the mortuary and every soldier who ended up in the mortuary, entered through that room. Even without the mud and business of war, the kids were again, silenced.

The coach took off again and eight miles before another front line, the courier told them that this was where the allied army had had to retreat to, on foot when the German army tested out mustard bombs. As the coach covered the miles, so the kids were ever more disbelieving at the realisation of how far the army had to march in retreat for their lives.
A Canadian officer had worked out that if you peed into your hankie and then covered your face with it, you could save yourself from the effects of the gas.
The Germans apparently had no idea of the impact of what they had done, if they had, they could have won a pivotal victory.

At twilight, and in persistent drizzle, the tour arrived at a German wargrave cemetery.
Even now, the German cemeteries have to be protected with high fencing for fear of desecration. The kids had to literally climb into the place.
The final silence was when they surveyed the crosses. All of the German crosses were black. Even in death they were demonised by their victors. At the bottom of the graveyard, and facing in as though forever protecting their fallen, were these four lifesize statues of German officers. Austen said the whole atmosphere of the place made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Lest we forget.