Twenty-five children got a taste of life in the trenches of World War I as part of a school holiday programme at Henley Men's Shed.
The "trainee soldiers" this week made periscopes, filled sandbags and constructed fortifications, and communicated by semaphore "the sort of cellphones they had 100 years ago", says shed co-ordinator John Bush.
Mr Bush said the participants, aged from 9 to 12, also fired rounds from home-made trench mortars and threw "hand grenades" at an oil drum target, the bombs being tennis balls. The programme, arranged by Connecting Communities, launched with a talk from Gallipoli expert Wayne Furness about the Gallipoli campaign. Shed member Ian Campbell built three mortars for the programme. "Children were told what Gallipoli was really like and while the emphasis was on fun, the underlying serious message was Lest We Forget."
