29. september 2003
Is the grass growing over it?

Battlefield sites, memorials and reconstruction in Flanders and on the Soca

The British novelist, L S Hartley, made the following comment about history: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

To consider the difficulty of piecing together past events study the three blocks of letters below. What do they mean? With a little prior knowledge the battlefields of Flanders and the Soca can be found in the first two blocks. With no prior knowledge they are meaningless jumble of letters. The third block is made up of the names of Hungarian soldiers commemorated at Javorca.

The same is true of our understanding of the past. Without some points of reference we cannot begin to sort the jumble of experiences out. When looking at memorial sites and battlefields a judgement has to be made about what is there. Does it provide a means to learn more about the site? Does it reveal what actually happened there? Is there an emotional impact?

Narrative accounts of the movements on a battlefield refer to places and locations, in an attempt to explain the actions of formations, often these places and locations do not appear on modern maps. On the ground there is nothing to reveal what had once happened there. I have travelled to the battlefields to find these places and locations and to place them on the modern map.

The Spartans called the battlefield "the dance floor of war". The dance can only be understood when you know the steps. By finding the locations you follow the steps made on the battlefield. You may then begin to understand the battle. And those who fought there.

I have visited the battlefields of France and Flanders. The past there is lost. The rolling countryside of the Somme and the flat plains of Loos and Flanders are only marked by cemeteries. These are random steps in the four years of war. The grass has grown over the battlefields and farmland has hidden the horror of war. To understand the past on the Western Front you need to follow as closely as possible the path taken to enter the front lines. The fields and farms give only the barest of reference points. Without a detailed knowledge of the ground you would learn nothing of what took place there. Memorials reflect the concerns of the living and not the dead. The absence of memorials from much of the front reveals the desire to strip recollection of reference points on the ground. The past has been lost and forgotten. But it is important to tell the visitor what happened there. The battlefield site should allow the visitor to perceive the thin line that supported and separated everyday existence from the horror that happened there. The visit should encourage further questions about what happened rather than a simple tick on a checklist of places to see. The visit should develop an emotional connection to the events that took place. Education with an emotional understanding is the means to counter misrepresentation of history as fact, it will prevent the past being lost and forgotten. The ground remains and it still has the evidence that something really did happen there. The physical preservation and collection of this evidence is vital.

Reconstruction can change the multifaceted and contradictory nature of a battlefield to a sterile, one-dimensional image. The reconstructed site becomes a streamlined symbol. It contains all of the stereotypical attributes but it has been reduced to a representation. The emotional engagement is lost. A battlefield site is also a commitment to those who fought there. It is an opportunity to view the activities related to physical survival as well as suffering and death. Glimpses of the daily routine that make life bearable under extreme conditions bring the soldiers to life. They are no longer numbers or corpses in photographs, empathy and emotional engagement is possible with people and events in the past. The battlefield site should be left in its original state. The physical preservation of the remaining relics should now have the highest priority.

The grass has grown over much of Flanders but Verdun is different. Here the battlefield has been left untouched. The organisation and representation of this French battlefield produces an interesting contrast to much of the Western Front. However even here it should be borne in mind that the commemorative markers reveal more about the people who create them than about the history they purport to represent. Historical sites have been continually reshaped to reflect present conceptions of the past and not the past itself.

My analysis of the Soca battlefields has been made in the light of my experience of the Western Front. The Soca has many and varied examples of the different types of battlefields I have discussed before. I intend to identify a few to illustrate a comparison with the Western Front.

Most of the sites promote experiential learning by approaching and moving around the site using the trenchlines and tracks from the period. This develops an intuitive understanding of what it was like to have been there, on the ground. Mengore is an important site with many relics worthy of preservation. It has the virtue of being small enough to visit and gain an understanding of in a short time. Ravelnik is smaller still and like Mengore it is not difficult to understand why this was an important battlefield. Reconstruction has taken place at Ravelnik. It does help the understanding of the site but at the cost of losing the original, untouched feel of Mengore. The reconstructions at Na Gradu have lost any feeling. It is hard to understand the battlefield here. The original trenchlines beyond the reconstruction are much better. I am very conscious of the "Rommel factor" in much of the literature available in English and the selection of this site seems to be in danger of producing a site for tourists to visit and check off their list, learning nothing. Kluze and Hermann offer a similar contrast. The approach to Hermann offers a lot of experiental instruction and the fort itself should be preserved as it is. The reconstruction of Kluze shows what could be lost at Hermann. Hermann feels that it has been untouched since the day the last shell fell. This is how battlefield sites should be preserved. Mrzli Vrh like Hermann has much to teach on the approach to the site. It is unfortunate that such an intimate site as the kaverna with the altar below the summit has not only been reconstructed but also redesigned. What should have been a simple religious site on the approach, of great significance to those on the way to the summit to fight, has a feel totally out of character with the barren slopes of the summit. Javorca built to commemorate the men who fought on the summits nearby retains the spirit of those who built it. Javorca deserves to be visited by all who come to the Soca. While increasing access to the sites will hinder preservation many of them are difficult to reach. I can only wonder why money has been spent on access to sites on the Kolovrat when Javoraca would provide a more meaningful site. Javorca leaves the visitor with many questions. It also brings the names of the fallen back to life. Who were these men, where did they come from? What did they achieve?

The Soca is different from the Western Front. The grass has not yet grown over the sites. Choices that can no longer be made on the Western Front have still to be made. Which sites to preserve? Should there be reconstruction? How to control access? For those charged with these decisions perspective and comparison are vital.

Lessons can be learnt from the Western Front. Verdun and Passchendaele offer two contrasting examples. I have learnt much from visiting the Soca. I have much more to learn and will have to keep coming back. I hope the preservation of the Soca can learn from what has happened on battlefields elsewhere.

Many years on perhaps the ghosts can finally rest on the battlefields of Europe. Those who suffered the trauma have passed on. The tangled web of past history can never be undone. Can we still ask for penance and recompense? But we should never forget. If we forget it could be seen that we are excusing what has happened in the past. It is time to explain and recognise what actually did happen. Only then can we accept the present and prepare to move on into a future Europe with a common heritage.

Steve Brown, Ipswich, Suffolk, UK