Julie Reece Tours: Francesca's profile number 4 : Ashleigh Martin returns to the battlefields.

Connecting Spirits continues to expand to new communities in South Australia.

By Francesca Atkinson

Connecting Spirits has opportunities for students, teachers and those who interested in the history of World War I, to visit battlefields in Europe to commemorate their ancestors or others from their communities. Ashleigh Martin has just completed her third tour, this time as a qualified primary school teacher at Mount Compass Area School on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia.

“The first trip, I was only 18 and had never travelled before. On the second tour I took on the role of a youth leader and felt I had to portray myself in a particular way. The recent tour has been different as I’ve been able to just sit back and I think I’ve taken much more in now,” Ashleigh says. “I’m 25 and I took in a lot more information and sort of viewed it differently and through a different lens, which I’ve had on each tour.”

Ashleigh involved her year one and two class in the lead up to the 2019 tour, educating them on how Sutton Veny Church of England Primary School in Wiltshire, England, recognises the Australian servicemen and women in their everyday studies and school life.

The school holds an Anzac service each year, where school children lay posies at the graves of the Australian soldiers and two Australian nurses buried there. After the war, many Australians were waiting to be sent home, when the Spanish Flu went through the region and sadly many of these men and women, who had physically survived the war, died.

Working with her children, during their Humanities and Social Sciences subject to teach them the history of Anzac Day, they created a book to present to the children of Sutton Veny School about their class and the wider community of Mount Compass.

“I think it’s made our kids become a bit more aware. They’d heard of Anzac Day and they knew what it was for, but they didn’t really understand it, so having the link to Sutton Veny, enriched them a bit more and given them a bit more of an understanding,” Ashleigh stated.

“I had a little girl in the year two class the other day come up to me and she’d written out all this information about her grandfather who was in the Air Force and had drawn up copies of his medals. I was able to show her pictures of the Battle of Britain memorial, there are some really interesting conversations from this.”

As she continues her Connecting Spirits journey, Ashleigh finds herself reflecting on the differences of each tour and how she has grown as a person, not just by age, but also through her changing perspectives of each tour. Having travelled overseas for the first time as a recent high school graduate and then again as a university student three years later, going back to the same battlefields now as a qualified teacher, opened Ashleigh’s eyes to the hell that was the First World War.

‘When travelling as a high school student or one who has just graduated, you rely very much on the group as a whole and in particular Julie Reece, who established the Connecting Spirits tours, to understand the emotional impact you feel. If travelling after some form of life experience, whether that is university, retirement or every stage of life in between, you are able to comprehend how to release your emotions in different ways. I think it’s just perspective, I think that’s the key word,” Ashleigh explained.

“It just changed my perspective on society and the world that we are in. If this happened in this day and age, there would be outrage and the fact that a lot of people don’t know the extent of it, it is just like what if this were to happen again.”

For each tour Ashleigh commemorated different Australian soldiers and each commemoration has held significance to her, whether it is an ancestor of her own or completed on behalf of others. Before her most recent tour, she found the names of WWI soldiers on the Mount Compass memorial, extending the connection of the local school community to her time on tour.

Each of her commemorations were unique and by commemorating those soldiers on the memorial, she was able to undertake some further research of the Mount Compass community and understand what the region used to be like. While in Codford, in England, the group was able to visit the church where one Mount Compass soldier was married and for Ashleigh, being there was a truly powerful moment.

“The names were just on a memorial in Mount Compass and I didn’t even know they were in the First World War, until just out of curiosity I did some matching up of names,” Ashleigh said. “They were on the plaque which commemorated the first students that went to Mount Compass School, so it popped up purely by coincidence. I looked at a World War I list, then a school list and matched the names up.”

If going through the memories of her three completed Connecting Spirits’ tours, Ashleigh could be talking forever, however she does have several events that stand out, in her reflections of each tour. While each tour differed in the itinerary, all travel through France and Belgium, while on the recent tour, the group also visited the village of Sutton Veny in the English region of Wiltshire.

Ashleigh remembers standing beside her friend during her first Connecting Spirits tour, as she sang the Australian National Anthem under the Menin Gate in Ieper. On her second tour, she watched another student do the same and was able to reflect on her past experience, first being just slightly older than the high school students on her second tour.

“On the St Francis tour, watching those kids who were between 15 and 17, so sort of the same age as when I first went, watching them go through the same emotions and processing that I did on my first trip was really interesting and special,” Ashleigh says.

Ashleigh is a perfect example of how those who attend Connecting Spirits tours grow emotionally and continue to use the Connecting Spirits philosophy to share the remembrance of the servicemen and women to the wider community.

Personal reflections by Julie Reece:

When you read Frankie's profile of her friend Ashleigh Martin and view the photos below, several things become very obvious about this young woman from Willunga and the contribution she has already made to Commemoration and Reconciliation. Ash is a fine young person who gives so much to others and is developing into a wonderful teacher and educator. She is able to effortlessly glide between people of various age groups, backgrounds and interests making solid links and connections along the way. Those qualities enable her to be an effective teacher and one who children look up to and easily engage with. She displayed those qualities right from the start when I first met her in 2011. Our school system and its young ones passing through it, are incredibly lucky to have Ms Martin helping and guiding them. Likewise, the Connecting Spirits project and its ever growing family has been enriched by all that Ash has given us over the years. May she return once more on a future Connecting Spirits tour to add yet another layer to her own treasure trove of learning!

A teenager in the early days of her uni degree, Ashleigh embarked on her first tour in 2012.

Ashleigh's friendships crossed the generations!

Ash, Felicia and Frankie look out over the English Channel towards France reflecting on their shared experiences while on tour.

In 2014 after her Youth Leadership role on that tour, Ash stayed with the McGinity family near Liverpool and undertook a two week student teaching placement in a local Catholic school . Uni SA acknowledged this as part of her studies and included it in her degree.