What is America to me?

As the newly inaugurated President Trump repeated the words “America First”, I thought of the immaculate white crosses above Omaha Beach in Normandy. Their beautifully tended cemetery above the DDay landing sites are testament to the fact that eventually all of us have to face the fact that we are citizens of a big wide world, a world that faces common problems that require collaborative efforts. America would not have defeated Fascism by repeating Trump’s mantra. 

In June of 2019 Single Step Tours helped the Honors College at the University of Wyoming construct a tour of the battlefields of northern France. We met up in London, and caught a ferry to Caen in bright sunshine. Three nights in Bayeux gave us the opportunity to explore the DDay battlefield in some detail, but perhaps the strongest impression on the students was when we stood on the sandy beach and looked up at the bluffs. In that moment we shared the perspective of those brave young soldiers  as they emerged from their landing craft on that fateful morning. It was experiential learning at its most powerful.

The tour moved on to the WW1 battlefields. The poetry of that war was shared and reflected upon in the fields of the Somme, where in 1916 the world began to see what industrialised warfare was capable of. We were also able to look at the challenges faced by nurses and doctors in these horrific circumstances. 

The last leg of the tour took us to Dunkirk, where 338,000 British soldiers were rescued from the beaches and returned to the U.K. in 1940. Hitler’s Blitzkreig had won a battle, but the successful evacuation played an important part in ensuring that the forces of liberal democracy would win the war. The view across the beaches was the ideal setting for a more general reflection on warfare in the 20th century. What causes war? Why fight? Most importantly, how should the lessons of the 20th century guide us through the 21st? 

The students and faculty of the University of Wyoming were thoughtful, open minded people who brought a variety of disciplines to the mix. Their contributions to the discussion on the ferry home showed that the whole experience had a profound impact on them. It was a reminder to me of why the battlefields are the best classroom a teacher could wish for, and why I do what I do. 

“What will survive of us is love...”

Working on a book about Welsh rugby star Charlie Pritchard has brought this line of Philip Larkin’s to mind more than once. 

Charlie was killed after leading a trench raid in August 1916, and now lies in a CWGC Cemetery at Chocques, near Béthune. A famous rugby international in his day, Charlie had been a firm favourite of the fans at Rodney Parade, where he led a ferocious pack of forwards in the famous Black and Amber shirt of Newport RFC. It would have been no surprise to people in his home town that he had shown such selfless leadership on the Western Front. For years after his death, his daughter would be greeted by strangers in the street, all wanting to tell her that her father had been a great man. More than just a rugby player.

Charlie’s family, of course, were well aware of that. His wife Florence was forever unable to face the day of his death, the 14th of August. Her children recalled that she would cut a bloom from Charlie’s rose garden and place it in a vase in the centre of the dining room, then retire to bed for the rest of the day. Her daughter Violet, born a few weeks after the death of Charlie, came to dread the 14th August every year, when the family’s wound would open once more. Violet died in 1985 - on the 14th of August. 

98 years on...

98 years after the guns fell silent on the Western Front I find myself thinking of the 3500 US troops killed or wounded on that morning despite the fact that the generals knew that the armistice had been signed at 5am. The assaults on German positions continued right up to the designated 11am end to hostilities. Later, Congressman Fuller asked "Black Jack" Pershing if American lives had been "needlessly wasted" that morning.
Up at Compiegne, the German delegation had been startled by Foch's intransigence. His Gallic shrug and level stare was the response of a man who had seen his country bleeding to death over the course of the 4 years. "Tell these gentlemen that I have no proposals to make" he said, and waved them away.
No proposals, perhaps - but plenty of demands. German troops were to leave France, Belgium and Luxembourg. They were also to return Alsace Lorraine to France - that old wound had barely dried since the Franco Prussian War nearly 40 years back. France and its Allies were out to ensure that Germany would never be in a position to cause trouble again.
But as every History student knows, the severity of the peace treaty at Versailles did much to guarantee that there would be future conflict. It provided fertile soil for the growth of the Nazi Party in the succeeding decades, and the bitter crop was harvested in the self same railway carriage in Compiegne in 1940.
Those History students will be asking some big questions today.
They will see that we descended into World War in 1914 and 1939 because the world order was unstable, and it was challenged by ultra nationalists. Vast economic forces, barely understood at the time, caused tensions inside countries, and beyond their borders. These were exploited by political chancers who had little real understanding of the demons that they were unleashing on the world.
So - big questions...

Somme Burials

Piece from Times here

Work on site at La Boiselle, Summer 2013

Thoughts from last battlefield tour.

WW1 changed us as a country, probably in more ways than we might imagine. Fighting a Total War meant that the state had to modernise its approach, and it had to pass laws that allowed it to fight that war in the most effective way possible.

The logistics of moving millions of men, feeding them, training them, kitting them out - all this had to be carried out by a High Command that was used to handling a pre war force that was a fraction of the size of the British Army between 1914 and 1918. And, of course, that pre war force had been a fully professional outfit. To turn those keen recruits that joined up in their thousands when war was declared in the late summer of 1914 into soldiers was a mammoth task, and it could only be done with the support of a modern industrial state working at full capacity.

On our last bespoke battlefield tour, where this was discussed at some length, we reflected on the fact that the logistics behind the CWGC was evidence of a highly organised state structure too. This was particularly obvious at Thiepval and the Menin Gate, where the individual names of those who were lost were painstakingly recorded and carved into stone.
Lest We Forget.