ianw Posted 23 March , 2003 Share Posted 23 March , 2003 Can anyone recommend any books that deal either partly or wholely with visits to the Western Front in the 20's and 30's ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AOK4 Posted 23 March , 2003 Share Posted 23 March , 2003 If you're looking for the German side: the magazines of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge from the 1920s and 1930s give a lot of these reports of visits to the Western Front. Jan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw Posted 23 March , 2003 Author Share Posted 23 March , 2003 Jan, That is really very interesting. I wonder what the tone of these German visits was. I suppose they would have been rather similar since the experience of grieving relatives is much the same whatever nationality they happen to be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Reed Posted 23 March , 2003 Share Posted 23 March , 2003 Ian - as far as I know there are no published books on this subject; it is all in the primary source material on the British side: old comrades journals, Ypres Times, British Legion paperwork etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iain mchenry Posted 23 March , 2003 Share Posted 23 March , 2003 Ian, In one of the Salient Points books by messrs Smith/Spagnoly is a very interesting chapter about a group of British veterans re-visiting the Ypres Salient. They meet up with some German vets and both sides attend impromptu memorial services in both British and German war cemetaries. I'm miles away from my WW1 books at the moment so I can't be more specific which Salient Points book this chapter is in. Perhaps other Forum members could help. Regards Iain Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iain mchenry Posted 23 March , 2003 Share Posted 23 March , 2003 Ian, In addition to my posting above, have you read "13 years after" by Will Bird. A well known Canadian vet returning to the battlefields. He revisits his units old haunts in France and Belgium, finishing in Mons. A good read. Iain Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw Posted 23 March , 2003 Author Share Posted 23 March , 2003 Iain, The Will Bird sounds fascinating. Quick search showed it available at around $100 a copy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greenwoodman Posted 23 March , 2003 Share Posted 23 March , 2003 £14-95 in paperback from Ray Westlake! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CROONAERT Posted 23 March , 2003 Share Posted 23 March , 2003 ...or £4.95 from IMMC Ltd.,s "publications of the Great War". I've also seen it on sale (for a similar price to this) at the Hooge Crater Museum and Sanctuary Wood. Dave. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin Hornby Posted 23 March , 2003 Share Posted 23 March , 2003 IanW. There is a Canadian book published on visits to the Western Front. In 1936, the Canadian Legion organised a Pilgrimage to the Western Front. To remember the event they published a Remembrance Book called 'The Epic of Vimy'. The Book runs to 223 pages. It has many pictures of the pilgrims and covers the unveiling of the Vimy memorial by Edward VIII. It was compiled and edited by W.W. Murray, and published by: The Legionary - The Offical Magazine of the Canadian Legion of the British Empire Service League - Ottawa. The printer were 'The Perrault Printing Company, Montreal, Canada. There are copies of the book available on Bookfinder for between £14 & £20. Use the link and it'll take you straight there. Search on the title. http://www.bookfinder.com I hope this helps Martin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MartinWills Posted 24 March , 2003 Share Posted 24 March , 2003 Several books deal with individual visits and various biographies refer to visits. Two volumes on organised visits of one sort or another do spring to mind, however. In 1928 the British Legion organised a mass 10th anniversary tour of veterans and a souvenir book was puiblished giving the various itineraries from the special trains picking people up at their local station (some at seemingly ungodly hours) to the areas visited and the tea breaks organised. This does crop up in the book market from time to time and is not usually expensive. Another volume commemorates the King's "personal" pilgrimmage shortly after the war ended and is a nice well illustrated volume. Again it does appear from time to time and is not expensive. I believe thath there are one or two volumes which deal with organised pilgrimmages to Gallipoli as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kate Wills Posted 24 March , 2003 Share Posted 24 March , 2003 IanW, Are you looking for personal or organised group pilgrimages? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AOK4 Posted 24 March , 2003 Share Posted 24 March , 2003 Jan, That is really very interesting. I wonder what the tone of these German visits was. I suppose they would have been rather similar since the experience of grieving relatives is much the same whatever nationality they happen to be. Ian, I have quite a few years of this magazin and they talk a bit of everything, mostly of course about the state of the cemeteries (which was really bad until late 1920s), but also about how you could travel from one place to another, where you could get help etc. If you can read German fraktur, I highly recommend reading a few of the reports. Jan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dolphin Posted 24 March , 2003 Share Posted 24 March , 2003 Ian There's a chapter (No 29) on post-war visits to the Ypres Salient in "Passchendaele in Perspective" edited by Peter Liddle, Pen & Sword Books 1997 [iSBN 0 85052 588 8]. Dolphin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw Posted 24 March , 2003 Author Share Posted 24 March , 2003 Many thanks for all the suggestions. I will certainly look for the Wills book when in Belgium in April by popping into the places suggested. In answer to Kate , both personal and group pigrimage experiences interest me. I have in my possession a small handwritten map showing the route from a French Station to a local cemetery and thence to an individual grave. It obviously accompanied an English relative on a personal pilgrimage and is almost unbearably poignant. I repeated that walk a few years ago from the (now defunct) station and cannot describe the feelings I experienced moving through the quiet French countryside towards the waiting grave. Unit pilgrimages back to visit fallen friends and to drink again in familiar estaminets must have been incredible too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacky Platteeuw Posted 24 March , 2003 Share Posted 24 March , 2003 Ian, Very interesting are also (phantastic photograph's) 'Twenty Years After' (3 volumes) by Ernest Swinton. Edited by George Newnes London 'The Western Front Then and Now' same editor. Jacky Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Reed Posted 24 March , 2003 Share Posted 24 March , 2003 Regarding Will Bird's book '13 years After' - the edition published by Ted Smith (the cheaper one) is only part of the book and might be an later abridged version. The one published by CEF books is the full version - and in my opinion, the one worth buying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greenwoodman Posted 24 March , 2003 Share Posted 24 March , 2003 Hi Dave and Ian Just to say that the "Publications of the Great War" edition of "Thirteen Years After" is "An edited extract from a book of the same name". The full-length book is some 240 pages long. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Morgan Posted 24 March , 2003 Share Posted 24 March , 2003 I have a copy of a postcard shown above which appears to commemorate a British Legion pilgrimage to Vimy ("Wimy" on the postcard.) "Wimy Ridge welcomes the British Legion - Wimy the 6th August, 1928." The picture is of something which looks like a ceremonial welcome arch. In tiny letters is the additional text, "Albert Buignet - constructeur." Contructor of the arch, presumably. The Vimy Memorial is visible through the arch, although it wasn't started until 1925 and (in 1928) it would be some years before it was finished. Incidentally - has anyone else ever seen any other use of the spelling "Wimy"? Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Reed Posted 24 March , 2003 Share Posted 24 March , 2003 This was the biggest post-war British pilgrimage to the battlefields; over the years I have come across all sorts of ephemera and postcards commemorating it. A small book was published and all those that came had a copy. I did hear or read someone was doing a PhD on this pilgrimage - but that's all I know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walter Kortooms Posted 24 March , 2003 Share Posted 24 March , 2003 A recent book is "Battlefield Tourism", Pilgrimage and the Commemoration of the Great War in Britain, Australia and Canada, 1919-1939 by David W. Lloyd. It's part of the "The Legacy of the Great War" series. Published in paperback by Berg in 1998. Walter Kortooms Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bert Heyvaert Posted 24 March , 2003 Share Posted 24 March , 2003 'battlefield tourism' indeed is an excellent book! I would also recommend the 'old contemptibles' magazines, which are available in the IFF-documentation centre and especially the Ypres Times which is really loaded with reports on pilgrimages. I wrote a small piece myself on British ex-soldiers working in battlefield tourism in post-war Ypres, based on interviews and the city population registers. If you're interested I can send you the file, but it's all in dutch I'm afraid. regards, Bert. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul guthrie Posted 24 March , 2003 Share Posted 24 March , 2003 Well Bert send it to Chris! He is fluent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kate Wills Posted 25 March , 2003 Share Posted 25 March , 2003 A few suggestions Ian, 'Wet Flanders Plain' was Henry Williamson's account of his personal pilgrimage to the scenes that continually haunted his mind. The composer Sir Arthur Bliss, who later became Master of the Queen's Musick, was wounded in the Battle of the Somme, which also took his talented brother Kennard. He made a pilgrimage, which he mentions in his autobiography 'As I Remember'. Another book I chanced upon recently was 'Passing Along' by Eric Roberts, a Yorkshireman who took his family on a private pilgrimage in the 30s. Since a certain bearded bloke had already run-up a sizable bill, I left it for another time. Does anyone else know it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw Posted 25 March , 2003 Author Share Posted 25 March , 2003 Kate, Thanks for the suggestions. I have a copy of "The Wet Flanders Plain" which is a stunning book, I think. I will look out the others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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