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Abstract
The Great War battlefield landscape of the Western Front still exerts an enormous potency for tourists even though much of its geography requires significant decoding to understand its now hidden stories and dramas. Thousands of British visitors travel to the area throughout the year, drawn to empathize with its symbolic commemorative spaces. This essay explores the ways in which tourists embarking on commercial coach tours engage with the battlefield landscape by examining contemporary tourist performance, as well as the role of the tour guide in setting and directing their imaginative and emotional encounter with the area.
The author thanks Dr Garry Marvin at Roehampton University for his insight and comments.
Notes
This essay draws on and develops a portion of the author's PhD thesis, “Memorial Landscapes of the Western Front: Spaces of Commemoration, Tourism and Pilgrimage” (University of Surrey, Roehampton, 2003; Prof. John Eade, dir.). An earlier version was presented as a seminar paper for the conference, “Tourism and Performance: Scripts, Stages and Stories”, July 14–18, 2005, at Sheffield Hallam University, UK.
1. Unless otherwise acknowledged, quoted remarks were made to me in personal communications during fieldwork and interviews I conducted between 1997 and 2003. See note 2 for further details.
2. The essay is based on a continuing study of battlefield tourism to the Western Front which began in 1997. It draws on my PhD thesis, “Memorial Landscapes of the Western Front: Spaces of Commemoration, Tourism and Pilgrimage.” Overall, I have traveled on five coach tours to the Western Front. Four of these trips were conducted by a leading battlefield company, which is the focus of this essay. My data is based upon carrying out participant observation on the coach tours which varied from covert (as a complete participant) on my first tour, to overt (participant-as-observer) on subsequent tours, where I slipped between the roles of researcher and group member as the occasion determined. On the first tour I believed that by remaining anonymous I could mix freely with the other clients and share exactly the same experiences. In addition, at this time I was aware that my lack of detailed knowledge about the battles that took place on the Front could impact upon my role as a researcher. Because the area is a mecca for military historians, many people make the blanket assumption that all researchers are (or should be) experts in military history. As a result, I reacquainted myself with the history of the major battles on the Front, and on subsequent tours I was happy to reveal the extent and details of my research to my fellow travelers and to the guides. Far from hindering my research, both travelers and guides alike were usually very helpful and responsive. I have also made about a dozen individual research trips and on these occasions I interviewed visitors, the sponsors of battlefield travel and their guides, the guardians of the cemeteries, visitor center, and tourist office managers, and museum curators. The interviews ranged from being highly structured, with a set of written questions, to informal, unstructured ones that took the form of conversations. These methods were supplemented by historical and archival research. I recorded my data by taking extensive notes, audiotaping the majority of interviews, and taking photographs.
3. The writer and artist CitationGough also employs the theatrical metaphor in his essays about war and commemoration. See his “War Memorial Gardens as Dramaturgical Space” and “‘That Sacred Turf’: War Memorial Gardens as Theatres of War (and Peace).”
4. In addition to CitationBourne, authors such asTerraine; CitationKeegan; CitationNeillands; and CitationBond and Cave have also taken a more positive view of the conduct of operations on the Western Front and the achievement of the Allied armies.
5. Along the same lines, CitationBruner proposed the idea of “the questioning gaze” to describe the doubts that tourists may entertain regarding “the credibility, authenticity, and accuracy of what is presented to them in the tourist production” (95).
6. The original sign disappeared many years ago, but the wording is now preserved on a memorial stone erected outside the cemetery gate. The military cemeteries in Belgium and France were ceded to Britain and its Allies in perpetuity as the “free gift” of those governments.
7. The Last Post is one of a number of bugle calls in military tradition which mark the phases of the day. Where Reveille signals the start of a soldier's day, the Last Post signals its end.
8. According to one of the company's tour guides, although it is generally taken for granted that the silence lasts for two minutes, on most trips it only lasts for one because people find it difficult to remain still for the full two-minute period.
9. The stone altar is formally known as the Stone of Remembrance, designed by the memorial's architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens. Stone altars also stand in all the Allied military cemeteries which contain a minimum of 400 graves.
10. The Last Post Association was established in 1929 as a voluntary and independent body charged with the daily organization of the sounding of the Last Post under the Menin Gate Memorial.
11. On November 11, 1998, the Island of Ireland Peace Park was opened in Messines, Belgium, dedicated to the memory of the 50,000 men from Ireland who died on the Western Front. Its founders, Paddy Harte, a member of the Irish Parliament, and Glen Barr, a Protestant from Northern Ireland, established the Park in order “to promote peace and reconciliation between all the people of the Island of Ireland” by encouraging tourism from both sides of the border to those areas in Belgium and France where Catholics and Protestants fought and died together.
12. To date I have undertaken one tour to the Normandy beaches in July 2005. Although my own investigation to these sites is at its infancy I discerned a notable difference in the atmosphere of the journey. There was not the overwhelming sense of tragedy and loss that often pervades the Western Front sites, even though the casualties incurred during the landing phase in the summer of 1944 were of Great War proportions. Perhaps this is because the Allied invasions were ultimately accompanied by the scent of victory, unlike the battles of the Somme and Passchendaele which are still perceived as symbols of futility and wanton sacrifice.