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.
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.
One of the the high points of the tour for Ashleigh was the collaboration she had with the school at Sutton Veny and their young students.
After only one year in the teaching game, Ash is a born natural in this very demanding profession. She has found her calling.
