The Western Front: the creation of meaning and value in a war landscape (2024)

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Representations of War on the Western Front, 1914-18: Some Reflections on Cultural Ambivalence

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‘Tommifying the Western Front’, Historical Geography 37(3) (338-347).

Ross Wilson

Historical Geography 37(3) (338-347)

This article uses letters, diaries and memoirs to examine the processes by which British soldiers on the Western Front gave meaning and definition to the war-torn landscape at the front and behind the lines. As the world’s first industrialised war developed in France and Belgium, millions of British civilians, both men and women, volunteered or were conscripted into the service of the British Army. These individuals were essential in maintaining an unprecedented war-effort on the continent as vast quantities of materials and manpower were transferred to British Army bases in France and Belgium. The scale of this operation amounted to no less than a full-scale military occupation. As British soldiers, labourers and support staff were posted to the Western Front they encountered an unfamiliar, war-ravaged landscape. The scenes of devastation, refugees, poverty and violence shaped a distinct sense of place on the Western Front. This evocation of place is demonstrated by the process of soldiers attributing names, values and associations to villages, towns and areas on the Western Front. As troops were circulated from the trenches to billets behind the lines they asserted notions of identity and place by ‘Tommifying’ northern France and Belgium.

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The Western Front: landscape, tourism and heritage

Rudi Hartmann

Current Issues in Tourism, 2017

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Itineraries of the Great War and the rise of the local on the Western Front: Memory, commemoration and the shifting regimes of remembrance tourism

Rafiq Ahmad

The mainstream grand narratives of the Great War have tended to disregard local perspectives from territories on the Western Front. Using on-the-field visits of battlefields, interviews with stakeholders and analysis of battlefield guidebooks and itineraries, this article addresses these gaps by examining local assertions in the re-invention of battlefield itineraries and remembrance trails of the Great War, the new socio-spatial order they establish and discordance of perspectives it triggers between the nation and the territory. The itinerary, thus, devised by memory entrepreneurs and performed by visitors on the ground becomes an 'effort of remembrance' and a dynamic scheme mediating between participants and place.

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‘The Popular Memory of the Western Front: Archaeology and European Heritage’, in E. Waterton and S. Watson (eds.) Cultural Heritage and Representation: Perspectives on visuality and the past. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 75-90.

Ross Wilson

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The Great War Remembered: Commemoration and Peace in Flanders Fields

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Matter and memory in the landscapes of conflict: The Western Front 1914-1999

Nicholas Saunders

Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile and Place. B Bender and M Winer (eds.). Oxford: Berg, 2001

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Westfront Nieuwpoort: The (Collected) Memory of the Belgian Front

Karen Shelby

The Great War in Belgium and the Netherlands, 2018

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Warscapes. Managing Space on the Western Front, 1914-1918

Christoph Nübel

Past Societies, 2020

It is quite common to call the First World War a ‘machine war’ or a ‘total war’. Both concepts highlight structural dynamics of warfare between 1914‑1918 but hardly take geography or landscapes into account. Nevertheless, war might just as well be seen as a large-scale spatial encounter. This paper aims to show that the spaces of World War One were man-made and highly dynamic. Firstly, it is assumed that a spatial analysis of the First World War needs to specify the relevant concepts. It is deficient just to make space a catchy label without developing a concise notion of space. Instead, it is necessary to identify particular physical or mental spaces which shall become the objects of research. Secondly, by applying this assumption, this paper will elaborate on three categories of warscapes and ask how the German soldiers grappled with these spaces on the Western Front. The environment posed an enduring threat to the soldiers. Weather and ground conditions affected their living situation and forced them to develop ingenious techniques of trench building. The conditions of the terrain were under constant change: novel tactics were developed which permanently produced new spatial structures. At the same time, the soldiers had to learn about the microstructures of the front zone in order to stay orientated and to deal with the terrain during battle. Thus, a constant training of cognition and moves was necessary. The soldiers were well aware of the landscapes. While conceiving the destroyed countryside, they reflected on the war. Interestingly enough, they were able to make sense of all the chaos and destruction. Some welcomed the war as an opportunity to master nature, others complained about the devastation. In very different ways, landscapes served as a medium to come to terms with the war experiences. These three spatial studies show how the soldiers struggled to adapt to the warscapes of the Western Front.

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Recalling the Ghosts of War: Performing Tourism on the Battlefields of the Western Front

Jennifer Iles

Text and Performance Quarterly, 2006

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 narratives. 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 trauma and magnitude of the First World War continue to exert a profound impact on the British imagination. The mass slaughter of young men caused by four years of industrial trench warfare on the battlefields of the Western Front in France and Belgium touched almost every household in Britain, and by 1918 virtually all the towns and villages in Britain had effectively become communities of the bereaved (Winter 6). Today, however, only a handful of veterans are still alive, and the conflict now occupies the furthest edge of living memory. Yet battlefield tourism, which began

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The Western Front: the creation of meaning and value in a war landscape (2024)
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