On this day in 1918 the guns stopped on the Western Front, ending more than four years of war. Every year we pause at this moment to honour the courage, sacrifice and service of everyone who has served, and who still serves, in the armed forces, and to think about what war costs.

 

This year our students told a story from much closer to home.

 

On the morning of 16 December 1914, German warships appeared off the coast of Hartlepool and shelled the town. It was one of the first attacks on British civilians in the First World War. More than a hundred people were killed, many of them children on their way to school. The war had come to the North East’s doorstep.

 

Our Drama students performed an original piece based on that morning and on its effect on one Hartlepool family, all the way to Armistice Day in 1918. The film opens in a cottage kitchen as a mother gets her children ready for school. Then the first shells land. Her eldest son, Tommy, runs out to help in the streets, and in that moment he decides to enlist.

 

His letters home bring the audience closer to him. In flashback scenes at a training camp in France we watch Tommy write the words his mother reads aloud at her kitchen table. He jokes with his friend Albert, says sorry for missing his sister’s birthday and pins his little brother’s drawing of a tank to the wall of his billet. Every letter ends the same way: “I’m being sensible. Your loving son, Tommy.”

 

In the autumn of 1918 the family receives a telegram. A few minutes later Tommy’s last letter arrives, a day or two late. Then, on 11 November, church bells ring all over town and the neighbours spill into the street to celebrate the end of the war. Freddie, the youngest boy, asks the question that sits at the heart of the piece: “Does this mean our Tommy’s coming home now?”

 

The film ends with his sister Joan taking her mother’s hand and making a promise: “We’ll remember him, Mam. Every year.” Our students made that same promise this morning.

 

The film was filmed on location at Beamish, The Living Museum of the North, in the 1900s town, the pit village and the woodland. It was shared with every student across the school.

 

We’d like to thank our Drama Department and the students who wrote, rehearsed and performed this powerful piece of work. We also thank the team at Beamish once again for their support. The town and the cottage where Tommy’s family lived felt real, and our students had the chance to step into history and remember the people of Hartlepool, a community not far from our own.

 

Tommy and his family are fictional. The town, the bombardment and the loss are real, and they were shared by thousands of families across our region. That is why we pause.