At a Presentation Evening at the Bovington Tank Museum on 30 April 2009 two students from the Thomas Hardye School in Dorchester, Molly Borland in Year 9 and Ben Winsor in Year 12, became the overall winners of the first School Competition on the Great War organised by the Dorset & S. Wilts Branch of The Western Front Association.
The students who entered all worked very hard and the final projects and essays were excellent. At the Presentation Evening at the Tank Museum Molly and Ben each received a cheque for £100 All entrants received a book on the Great War, presented to them by the WFA Dorset Branch chairman, Martin Willoughby and the Branch Education Officer, David Seymour.
The competition was launched, as a pilot scheme, in February with the help of the History Department at the Thomas Hardye School. The students were given six weeks to complete their entries. Students in both competitions could choose from a variety of topic areas on the Great War including the home front, conscientious objectors, women in the armed forces, the war in the air and at sea, racism in the British army and the 1918 campaign on the Western Front.
Year 9 (aged 13 to 14) students had the opportunity to present their findings as a project and they could choose from a variety of formats including a television/radio programme, a piece of artwork, a model, or a piece of extended writing. Each project had to show evidence of research and the student’s point of view on the topic.
Molly Borland’s winning entry was a pencil drawing with a watercolour background in response to her research into the final campaign on the Western Front. The red and yellow background wash represented, as she wrote in her research notes for this drawing, “poppies, death and the strange light created from the firing of weapons”.
Molly chose to show General Sir Douglas Haig in the forefront of her drawing, using, as she said, “shades of grey to represent the strains of war after he took command of the British army”. She added that “he used tactics during the war which were heavily criticised and were blamed for the heavy loss of life” but she pointed out “in 1918 Haig oversaw the successful British advances on the Western Front which led to victory for the Allies in November.”
As well as explaining what she had found out about the final campaign from the books and websites which she had consulted, the research booklet which accompanied Molly’s artwork contained sketches showing the stages which she had gone through before arriving at her final piece and an explanation of the background elements of her drawing. These included “figures of soldiers….drawn without any features in dark shades…..to represent the millions of lives lost during World War One”. She showed “destroyed buildings and uneven ground” to represent “land ruined and destroyed after heavy bombing” and she also included “a sentry in a trench alone to represent the loneliness of war”. At the Tank Museum prize-giving evening, Molly was clearly delighted to be rewarded by the judges for her hard work by being presented with the first prize in her age category.
Runners-up in the Year 9 category included Harry Stonhill, with his diorama of a trench scene which included duck-boards, barbed-wire and an approaching tank; Jules Bone, who investigated the role of submarine chasers through the diary of Chief Machinist’s Mate David Williams; Tom Owen, who entered a striking portrait of a sniper drawn on canvas; and David Lyons, who chose to write an extended essay about the final campaign on the Western Front. These Year 9 pupils were each presented with a copy of “Harry’s War”, the illustrated memoirs of Great War soldier Harry Stinton.
The Year 12 (aged 16 to 17) essay competition required an essay of between 1,500 and 2,000 words, fully referenced with a bibliography. It was stressed to the entrants that they should develop, in their own words, a convincing argument and show evidence of having read widely.
Ben Winsor’s well-argued winning essay addressed the question “What led men to conscientious objection during the First World War?”
Runners-up in the Year 12 competition included Rosa Hartnett, who also chose to investigate conscientious objection, and Emily Osborne and Cyrus Navvabi, who both decided to research the way in which British Society coped with the pressures and crises of World War One. All were presented with books chosen to reflect their individual areas of interest.
The evening was well attended by members of the Dorset Branch as well as competition entrants and their families. Proceedings began with a guided tour, given by the museum’s Education Officer, Chris Copson, of the new "Tank Story" exhibition. Guests then listened to a lecture by the Imperial War Museum’s oral historian, Peter Hart, who spoke about how historians use oral accounts as evidence. All those who attended had the opportunity to view the projects and essays produced by the students.
This very successful School Competition and impressive Presentation Evening indicates the way forward and the Dorset Branch looks forward with enthusiasm to involving more schools in the 2010 event.
School Website Report and Pictures.
