I wish I was going AGAIN

[paullaw1155]

Pals

Been sorting my pictures out from my last trip in May this year.

Took them into work to show some like minded mates and,a few who had no real interest but thought my pics was very good. One lad asked me how many times I had been and "why do you keep going". I have often wondered what it is about these visits that makes you want to return again and again. ( I do not have any realatives who seved in the great war).

I also do not know anyone who has visited once who is content with just that one visit.

I do think that the internet has helped GREATLY in anyone maintaining an interest. I know after my first visit I came across Toms Hellfire Corner Website, which added fuel to the fire. I was amazed to be reading pages of information regarding places that I had visited. I send links from this site and others to my two mates who traveled out with me last time this has further enhanced there interest, Infact some of there colleages ask if i can send them links or info.

I have never been able to fathom out as why my interest lies with the great war when in fact I was only born 10 years after the second.

Dont suppose I have really answered my own question will just have to keep revisiting until I find the answer.

Be interested to see what other Pals think.

Cheers

Paul

[Tom Morgan]

Paul -

It's difficult to say why, but so many of us simply have to keep going back "over there" and I'm no exception. Even though I get across more often than most, I never tire of it. The first battlefield area I ever visited was Ypres, many years ago now. I have told a lot of people this story, but the first time I stepped out of my car onto the square in Ypres, I felt a familiar feeling but couldn't quite place it. I recognised it again a few days later when I got back to my house - it was the feeling you get when you come home.

That about sums it up for me - I feel at home in these places.

(Thanks for the kind comments about my website, by the way.)

Tom

[ianw]

Quite agree with Tom about that feeling that you have come home on the Western Front. Ignoring the history, research etc, I have experienced many feelings of complete peace and contentment over there.

I particularly remember having a solitary lunch at a cemetery near Auchonvillers in the pouring rain when the whole place seemed to enfold me and a similar lunch in sunshine at Blighty Valley where I experienced precisely the same utter contentment.

Of course these feelings could purely be down to the situation of being away from family and work pressures with total freedom to go and do exactly what you want for as long as you want to do it ! It's much more than a holiday over there.

[John_Hartley]

I go "over there" because this is my "hobby" and I never like to do things by half. It helps the research which is my focus for the "hobby", because I can take photos.

I come back relaxed and refreshed. But, in truth, that's because it's a break from normal routine.

I come back relaxed and refreshed from a long weekend in the Lake District, a few days on the Western Front or a week in Tenerife (which I've visited more often than the Front). So, in that respect, a visit to Belgium or France isn't "special". But I like it.

John

[ypres1418]

Everytime I go and see a new part of the battlefields it gives rise to more questions, then I have to go back with those answers and look again,

Even though I have covered Loos over the last few years now I am reading the 7th Royal Sussex I will have to go again to stand on the same spots they did,

I will never tire of going, I know that, but will keep going for as long as I can,

Mandy

[Alan_J]

.....the situation of being away from family and work pressures with total freedom to go and do exactly what you want for as long as you want to do it !  It's much more than a holiday over there.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's it exactly! I love holidays with the family, but you are always compromising or agreeing about what to do or not to do. On trips to the battlefields, for once, it's up to me and me only!

Alan

[burlington]

I go back to the Somme time & time again because I feel I must. Don't ask me why but that is how I feel. As Tom said-

I feel at home.

I have no family or other connections with WW1 that I know about.

Martin.

[Patrick H]

I am always longing to go back to the battlefields, it just feels right to be there and although its not a "holiday" as such, nonetheless I always enjoy my time there. Ieper is like a second home now. A friend says I am morbid always going to the cemeteries and I cannot answer him, I dont find it at all morbid.

Trouble is the last 6 or 7 times I have been its to take someone else and you end up looking round the usual places! Sitting in my office typing this I am already planning my next visit.

Patrick

[paullaw1155]

I am always longing to go back to the battlefields, it just feels right to be there and although its not a "holiday" as such, nonetheless I always enjoy my time there. Ieper is like a second home now. A friend says I am morbid always going to the cemeteries and I cannot answer him, I dont find it at all morbid.

It would appear that we all have the same thoughts/feelings about the battlefields.

My avatar of Buttes cemetery is used because I felt something special about that place which I can not explain. Peacful, Tranquill comes to mind.

Patrick I also get accused of being morbid,

Alan Iagree with your " no compromising like on family holidays".

And as Tom and Burlington replied ,We all feel at home over there.

I hope to visit ypres next year and spend all my 4 nights 5days on the salient and leave the Somme visit for some other time. A bit wishfull thinking at the moment but it is nice to plan a visit.

Paul

[squirrel]

Having researched some of my family in WW1 I feel I have an obligation to remember those who were killed, wounded and the ones that came back.

For the ones who stayed in France & Belgium, the least I can do is to visit them as few of the family had the opportunity to do so and one day I might even get to Egypt to visit the one buried in Ismalia cemetery.

As it says on the King's scroll "see to it thast his name is not forgotten".

I always have a sense of being welcome at the British cemeteries especially so when I visit one for the first time.

[Morval Ross]

Hi PAls,

eventhough I am not a seasoned battlefield visitor, I am back over in three weeks time for 10 days. I first visited the Somme with my Dad and uncle while still n college. We had been researching my Grand uncle Bill who was killed ont he Somme at les Beoufs. But I cant explain why I keep going back. I feel like I ma living in history when I drive down the Albert Bapaume road early int he morning and the fog is thick. I think that it is these time when as If I am waiting for the whistle to go over the top. I know that I ma a luck young man that I did not have to go through what thes brave chaps did, and I think that is the reason I go back. These men gave their lives and get very few visitors from their families if any.

I also have a feeling from the Irish perspective. Our lads were treated horrendously in Ireland when they returned from the front. I always search out the irish names and regiments in the graveyards and say I was not one of those that treated your memory with such disrespect.

I also get the same comments as some of you, why do you do these trips Ross? why arent you off on a sun holiday on a beach? I tell them I have been to normandy beaches does that count. I just tell them that he ignores history is doomed to repeat it. and that if it were not for those that laid down their lives for peace, your trips to Greece and italy and anywhere in Europe may be somewhat different to what they are now.

anyway I think I have prattled on enough.

Ross.

[squirrel]

Found this in the front part of A Deep Cry, Anne Powell,about WW1 poets and I think that it sums up why we go back so often:

The whole earth is the tomb of heroic men;and their story is not graven on stone only over their clay, but abides everywhere, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives.

Pericle's funeral oration fromThucydides.

[armourersergeant]

I have only been once, with the last lot on the pals tour to Ypres for the 95th anniversary. But if time and money and the boos would permit i would return ,or go to other areas on the western front, and othger theatres come to that.

Why?

It is difficult to answer. But I guess it is because I can see and 'share' what a different generation to mine did for me and mine. Where honour, duty, loyalty were not just words forgotten but that meant something to those men who went and died, and those that came home but carried the scares for the rest of thier lives.

regards

Arm

[Will O'Brien]

I have only been once, with the last lot on the pals tour to Ypres for the 95th anniversary.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Arm I know I was there but have I missed 5 years somewhere

For me Ypres is the place I most long to return to.................It was the first battlefield area I ever visited so there is an emotional attachment to the place..............I also love the people there