My interest in the First World War has always puzzled my friends. They tend to look on it the same way as a World of Warcraft addiction, or someone who can actually speak Klingon. A personal quirk that shouldn't be held against me. I gave up trying to explain some time ago, because it was clear that they didn't see what I saw.
I have toured the battlefields of the Western Front twice now; once almost accidentally (that awoke my interest in the War, and I spent the next two years reading everything I could get my hands on about it) and again for my 25th birthday (I was born on 11 November; a curious coincidence, considering). I am taking my entire family on a third tour tomorrow, 13 August, for the Centenary of the War. I have spent the last year researching and planning the trip.
I'll be using this blog to talk about it, to draw attention to the Centenary, and hopefully to help others choose to visit the battlefields themselves.
I remember hearing stories from my father that he had heard from his grandfather about the Western Front during World War I. They were never particularly detailed stories but he would always shudder, as his grandfather had, when he repeated to me "Eep-ray (Ypres), a man's life wasn't worth THAT." with a snap of the fingers. It always made me shudder too.
My great-grandfather, Murdo Nicolson, spent almost 5 years on the Western Front with the Canadian Army between late 1914 and 1918. My parents, raised in Canada, had a completely different perspective of WWI from their children, raised in a suburb of New York City.
As an American child, WWI was never something I thought of; it's not "Our" war. The Civil War and WWII are "Our" wars, the wars that really defined the national character and changed our national destiny. They are the wars that families remember; the soldiers who died serving in those wars are still remembered by their descendants today.
The basic school curriculum involved the 4 causes of WWI: Imperialism, Militarism, Nationalism, Alliances. WWI was something that America was dragged into unwillingly, to save Europe when she couldn't save herself. As students we wrote rather smug essays with pat analyses; WWI was inevitable because the countries of Europe were caught up by the fervor of the times; it was inevitable because the countries of Europe didn't WANT to avert war; it was inevitable because the leaders of Europe were too blind to see the consequences of going to war. Growing up, I didn't know anyone whose great-grandfathers had fought in WWI. Everyone's grandfathers, and sometimes grandmothers, had been involved in WWII; but there is a cultural blind-spot about the First war.
For me, that changed when I spent 6 months as a University student in Arras, Nord-Pas-de-Calais; the very top province of France. Arras was fought over almost continuously in WWI, and again in WWII. As part of the German zone of occupation in WWII, the people had lived under Nazi rule from 1940-1944. I assumed that that would be the defining event of their modern history; but not so.
Monuments to the fallen of 1914-1918, American, British, Canadian, and French cover the town. There are memorial plaques, statues, and monuments everywhere. The people live with WWI as though it ended yesterday. The entire town was destroyed in the shelling during the 1917 Battle of Arras, but you wouldn't know it to look at it now. The Arrageois rebuilt it in the same Flemish style, and unless you know that there was an Ursuline Convent and chapel across the Petit-Place from the Hotel de Ville, you'll never miss it.
The countryside around Arras is dotted with Allied cemeteries, lovingly tended, and memorials to the battles of the Western Front and to the fallen.
My awareness of the War as something more came when my father visited. He wanted to tour the battlefields of the Western Front, so we did. We were completely unprepared for the experience.
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