The Ethics of Battlefield Tourism (Or, How Many Time Can I Say "Battlefield" in One Post)

High Wood by Philip Johnstone

Ladies and gentlemen, this is High Wood,

Called by the French, Bois des Fourneaux,

The famous spot which in Nineteen-Sixteen,

July, August and September was the scene

Of long and bitterly contested strife,

By reason of its High commanding site.

Observe the effect of shell-fire in the trees

Standing and fallen; here is wire; this trench

For months inhabited, twelve times changed hands;

(They soon fall in), used later as a grave.

It has been said on good authority

That in the fighting for this patch of wood

Were killed somewhere above eight thousand men,

Of whom the greater part were buried here,

This mound on which you stand being…

Madame, please,

You are requested kindly not to touch

Or take away the Company's property

As souvenirs; you'll find we have on sale

A large variety, all guaranteed.

As I was saying, all is as it was,

This is an unknown British officer,

The tunic having lately rotted off.

Please follow me - this way …

the path, sir, please

The ground which was secured at great expense

The Company keeps absolutely untouched,

And in that dug-out (genuine) we provide

Refreshments at a reasonable rate.

You are requested not to leave about

Paper, or ginger-beer bottles, or orange-peel,

There are waste-paper-baskets at the gate.

High Wood (called Bois des Fourcaux by the French, a name misprinted on British maps) was the site of fighting from July to September of 1916 as part of the Battle of the Somme in France.  High Wood was captured by the British after months of fighting; it was one of the last major woods in the Somme offensive to fall.  Like other WWI battlefields, High Wood was turned into a cemetery and memorial place (pictures below).*  There is a lot more information about this battle, including a day by day account of events, that can be found here.

High Wood can be seen in the background behind the cemetery.*

A restored memorial stone at High Wood.*

What made this battle particularly terrible (I mention this to reinforce the irony of the poem) is that the Germans were fortified in the woods with machine guns while the British approached from grain fields.**  It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the people in open fields are at a militaristic disadvantage compared to the ones hiding in the woods.  In short, the battle for High Wood proved to be no less terrible than the rest of the horrific events of the First World War.

 The Calvary preparing to charge the forest at High Wood.*

Johnstone, whose real name was John Stanely Purvis, wrote this poem in 1918, a few years after the Battle of the Somme but before battlefields were inundated with tourists.  Much like Hardy’s “Channel Firing,” “High Wood” predicts a remarkably accurate future.  Based on Johnstone's description of a soldier whose tunic has just rotted off, I believe he is speaking of the near future. Really, he is describing a permanent future where battlefields are tourist attractions. 

This poem describes people touring the High Wood battlefields, narrated by a tour guide who rattles off statistics about death and war without hesitation.  Notably, the High Wood battlefield has never been cleared of bodies and debris like some others, but this tour guide apparently doesn’t care.  He doesn’t seem bothered that “this mound on which you stand” is where 8,000 dead men are buried, shifting immediately from describing the battlefield to asking a woman not to take things from it… after all, his company wants to make a profit on souvenirs.  What’s the point of war if not to gain some profit, and if you didn't make enough during the war, no worries, plenty is left behind.

I also think his use of “Company” as a proper noun is interesting.  A company is a term for a group of soldiers, so he could be saying that the things on the battlefield are the property the soldiers who fought there.  This actually has an almost kind tone where the guide requests that they not take things from the dead.  Personally, I read this poem as a satire, mocking the desire of the living to see where men died and providing an indirect commentary about how wrong that is, so that interpretation doesn’t work for me.  I think the “Company” refers either to an actual company that has taken advantage of war for profit, the way weapons manufacturers do, or the government that continues to use these men for their own purposes, even in death.

Whatever you interpret the “Company” to be, the overarching theme of the poem is clear.  This author imagines battlefields becoming nothing more than tourist attractions, complete with souvenirs and snacks.  As I mentioned earlier, he was ultimately correct.  To this day, many battlefields (from a lot of different wars) have become major draws for tourists.  However, as a general rule, I think these places are regarded with much more respect than Johnstone would lead readers to believe.  Nonetheless, I think he expresses a very real fear, especially from the perspective of a war veteran. No one wants to see the place where his friends died, where he was wounded himself, become a trivialized location. Dare I take a Fussell stance and say Johnstone saw the battlefield of High Wood becoming a theater?

Philip Johnston is a pseudonym for John Stanley Purvis, a First World War veteran who was wounded at the battle of High Wood.  He survived the war, though his younger brother did not.  Johnston’s true identity was not learned until his death in 1968.^  “High Wood” is an interesting perspective on the preservation of war battlefields and begs the question, what is the place of tourists on fields of war, and how can battlefield tourism be done respectfully? I think battlefield tourism can be respectful. I think it can be educational. I think that relatives of those who died there have a right to visit, the same way they can visit a cemetery. I also think Johnstone probably feels the same way, and has a more nuanced view of battlefield tourism than this poem would let on.

Tourists visiting the High Wood battlefield in 1919, after the war.  Some were
relatives of men who died there and went on pilgrimages to see where
their loved ones had died.^^

*https://www.ww1battlefields.co.uk/somme/high-wood/ 

**https://allpoetry.com/High-Wood

^https://yorkcivictrust.co.uk/heritage/civic-trust-plaques/john-stanley-purvis-1890-1968/

^^https://greatwar.nl/frames/default-tourism.html 

The Flowers of Joyful Youth: An Analysis of "From a Trench" by Maud Anna Bell

 **Repost from class blog**

From A Trench by Maud Anna Bell

Out here the dogs of war run loose,
Their whipper-in is Death;
Across the spoilt and battered fields
We hear their sobbing breath.
The fields where grew the living corn
Are heavy with our dead;
Yet still the fields at home are green
And I have heard it said:

That there are crocuses at Nottingham!
Wild crocuses at Nottingham!
Blue crocuses at Nottingham!
Though here the grass is red.

There are little girls at Nottingham
Who do not dread the Boche,
Young girls at school in Nottingham
(Lord! How I need a wash!).
There are little boys at Nottingham
Who never heard a gun;
There are silly fools at Nottingham
Who think we’re here for fun.

But here we trample down the grass
Into a purple slime;
There lives no tree to give the birds
House room in pairing-time.
We live in holes, like cellar rats,
But through the noise and smell
I often see the crocuses
Of which the people tell.

Why! There are crocuses at Nottingham!
Bright crocuses at Nottingham!
Real crocuses at Nottingham!
Because we’re here in Hell.

How a Rock Opera Connected me to a WWI Poem: An Analysis of "Gethsemane" by Rudyard Kipling

**Repost from class blog**

Gethsemane by Rudyard Kipling

The Garden called Gethsemane
In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
The English soldiers pass.
We used to pass—we used to pass
Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
Beyond Gethsemane.

The Garden called Gethsemane,
It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
I prayed my cup might pass.

It didn’t pass—it didn’t pass
It didn’t pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
Beyond Gethsemane.

In Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, the character of Jesus sings a song titled Gethsemane (I Only Want to Say). That song popped into my head immediately upon seeing this title listed in Penguin and refused to leave for several days.  You can see the lyrics by following this link and listen to the song on YouTube here.  I recommend listening to the song (it echoes Jesus's actual sentiments in the Biblical text) while reading Kipling's poem. The similarities are obvious, and I want other people to have it stuck in their heads too. 

Being that Jesus Christ Superstar is one of my favorite musicals and Gethsemane one of my favorite songs from it, I was immediately drawn to this poem. Of course, the canonical basis for Kipling's poem and Webber's musical is the Bible, specifically the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed the night prior to his death.* I am fascinated when people use a well-known story to improve the understanding of a separate event, and because of my love of Jesus Christ Superstar as well as my upbringing in a Christian church, I realized right away that Kipling’s poem is deliberately written to parallel the events leading to the crucifixion of Christ. 

The first stanza sets the scene of soldiers marching through Picardy, perhaps stopping to rest, and being observed by the French people residing there. Picardy was the site of much violent fighting from 1914-1918.* Knowing this gives the line “The English soldiers pass” a sort of double meaning. “[P]ass” could refer to traveling through an area or more morbidly, passing to the next life. 



As I read the next stanza, I picture Kipling’s Garden as the land just before soldiers would reach the fighting and likely death, similar to how in the Bible the Garden is one of the last places Jesus spent time before his death. In Matthew 26.39, Jesus prays “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me."* This is shown in the image above**. Like Jesus in Gethsemane, this soldier is also asking for the cup that is representative of death to pass from him. Both men are in a peaceful garden, literal or metaphorical, knowing their inevitable death waits beyond. Not only death but painful death- crucifixion for Jesus, and gas for the man in the poem. In the third stanza that death arrives. Just as the cup didn’t pass from Jesus, nor does it pass from the soldier who dies from gas after leaving his Garden of Gethsemane.

Overall, I was surprised and captivated by Kipling's boldness in comparing a soldier’s sacrifice to the sacrifice of Jesus, a revered figure in Christianity and other major religions. However, rather than interpreting this as trivializing Jesus’s plight, I see this poem as elevating the plight of soldiers’ to the level of Christ. Though not directly, Kipling seems to be saying that a soldier who sacrifices their life, and more than that, does so knowing and resigned to the fact that they must die, is at the same level as the son of God. I think that this is an incredibly powerful sentiment. In Gethsemane, Kipling simultaneously applauds the bravery of soldiers, suggests a tragic necessity to their sacrifice, and reflects on the horror of war and death, all by alluding to the known story of Christ’s crucifixion.

In the early 1900s when this poem was written and published, people would have understood the biblical reference immediately. While I used a song from a rock opera to relate to it, those with any familiarity with the story of Jesus's death would likewise be able to understand and draw their own conclusions about Rudyard Kipling's Gethsemane.

*Radcliffe, J., & McGivering, J. (2011). “Gethsemane.” Retrieved September 9, 2020, from http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/rg_gethsemane1.htm

**Manly Poems – Gethsemane by Rudyard Kipling. (2010, October 24). Retrieved September 9, 2020 from https://anirishmanabroad.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/manly-poems-gethsemane-by-rudyard-kipling 

Oh to Be a Carrion Fly: An Analysis of “The Dancers” by Edith Sitwell

The Dancers by Edith Sitwell

The floors are slippery with blood:
The world gyrates too. God is good
That while His wind blows out the light
For those who hourly die for us –
We still can dance each night.

The music has grown numb with death –
But we will suck their dying breath,
The whispered name they breathed to chance,
To swell our music, make it loud
That we may dance, - may dance.

We are the dull blind carrion-fly
That dance and batten. Though God die
Mad from the horror of the light –
The light is mad, too, flecked with blood, -
We dance, we dance, each night.


If you just read “The Dancers” by Edith Sitwell, you might have experienced the same shock I did when I realized this poem was not about women but about flies that feast on dead flesh. The author, unlike many female First World War poets, is actually quite famous. She is more known for her World War Two poetry that is "of tragic grandeur and intensity.”* A lot of her works were considered experimental, drew heavily on religion, used unique rhythms, and employed “private allusions.”** The carrion-fly is not a private allusion, however, it does make you wonder what exactly the author was thinking when she wrote “The Dancers.”

Edith Sitwell

When I first read Sitwell’s poem, I immediately thought it was a piece about women that echoed the sentiments of many other poets - women and those on the homefront are living a happy, carefree life while men die in the trenches. When she talks about “those who hourly die for us” I immediately assumed she meant soldiers dying for the people at home who “can still dance each night” because of that sacrifice. I only become further invested in that metaphor with the idea of “we will suck their dying breath.” It reads like the author believes the people at home are stealing life away from the soldiers who are fighting and dying for them.

But that isn’t what the poem is about, as the final stanza reveals. The poem is about the carrion-fly (pictured below) eating the flesh of the dead, dancing on the flesh of the dead. Or is it?  Maybe my first interpretation holds true.  Perhaps Sitwell is comparing women and those who stay at home to the carrion-fly because they both are getting to dance and be happy only because people are dying. Death is necessary for their survival. It’s a bleak interpretation and somewhat Sassoon-like in that it doesn’t speak very highly of those at home.  Honestly, I think "The Dancers" could be read literally or metaphorically, but I personally prefer the bleakness of the metaphorical interpretation.

A carrion-fly.  I'll spare you the pictures of them on actual decaying flesh.

To conclude, there is one specific part of the poem that I want to highlight.  I found the idea of “the light” particularly compelling.  If God’s wind is blowing out the light, then the light must be human life blown out by God on the battlefield.  Based on the legend of the three Fates cutting the string of life that I talked about in my post on “The Ballad of the Three Spectres” by Ivor Gurney, I interpret “the light” to be the human soul being snuffed out by God. Carrying that interpretation to the final stanza where Sitwell says “Though God die/Mad from the horror of the light-/The light is mad” continues the bleak theme that was started when Sitwell compared those on the homefront to carrion flies. 

This poem puts on the page the idea that God is dead, something Fussell and the films discussed.  Now, not only is God dead, but he is killed by that madness caused by seeing how terrible the human soul is. The human soul is insane and so terrible it has driven God to fatal insanity.

*https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edith-Sitwell
**https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edith-sitwell