First World War Timeline for Swale by Tom Saunders, Connor Wade and Will Plumb

We have been researching into the Old Bordenians who faught in the great war and discovered these records that relate to some of the students who once attended our school.

 

By Connor Wade and Tom Saunders

On the 23rd January 2014, 16 pupils (including me) went on a day trip to Maidstone Museum and then Maidstone Library. Overall, it was quite fun day, and we learnt a lot of things in the process.

First off, at the start of the day, once we had arrived at Maidstone Museum, we each took a seat along a table. One seated, two men came into the room, dressed in the typical WWI soldier uniform, and started giving us a talk. They were telling us about all kinds of things, and one thing that stood out was the uniform they would wear. One of our friends from the group actually got to try out replicas of the garments they would wear, and it did look slightly ridiculous.

However, the main point of this project is football and peace, so of course we were trying to work out whether or not the Christmas Truce actually happened. During the course of it, we were presented with many artefacts from the time, which I was quite surprised to be presented with, considering they were almost 100 years old. After that, we got to have a little look around some parts of the museum (mainly war medals and other things relating to that). Then, it was onto the library.

Once arriving at the library, we were given a long talk. This part of the day was mainly focused on how our local area was affected by the war and what they did during and after the war, which was rather interesting. We were shown some items of propaganda that were used to try and persuade members of the public to enlist and sign up and, then, we were given a task to do for ourselves. We were split up into I believe either 4 or 3 groups, and we each had a different type of resource at hand (we had the newspaper, while other people had things like computers), and we were given questions to answer, the answers of which were found in our resources. Most of the questions (at least our one) related to the history of our school precisely, which was quite nice to learn).

So, overall, it was a very good day. I think all of us had a lot of fun, and it would be good to do again.

By Connor Wade

After researching into some of the Old Bordenian students who were involved in the conflict I came across some information regarding Audley Andrew Dowell Lee.

Audley Andrew Dowell LEE was the second son of Rev. Dr. and Mrs W Dowell Lee of Deytheur, Llansantffraid, Montgomershire where he was born on 3 April 1895.  He entered Oundle (New House) in January 1908 and left in July 1914.  He went up to Lincoln College, Oxford in October following. There he joined the O.T.C. and received a commission in the 9th Leicestershire Regiment in December 1914.
He went to France in October 1915 and was through the Somme Battles in 1916. For good work in July of that year he was awarded the Military Cross, January 1917.  He was promoted Captain in October 1916.
He fell on October 1 1917 while leading his company forward to repulse a heave attack.  An officer wrote: “We feel his loss more than words can express, for he was beloved by all ranks”.
TYNE COT Memorial (ZONNEBEKE)(West Vlaanderen Belgium)

 

By Connor Wade