On my last trip to London, I found myself in a bookstore full of expensive and excellent condition mid-century first editions and well-preserved older books. I quickly assumed I would just be browsing and probably wouldn’t find anything in my almost rare/buried in an unorganized pile at the back of the shop/musty edition of a book budget. (Every collector is different and so every collection is personal!) I just about to abandon the shop and find a less organized spot to go hunting until I learned, once again, you should never underestimate what a book shop can provide.

But first I need to back up a little…

When I was at university I was writing a paper about For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway and fell down a research rabbit hole when I discovered an article about a tour groups who came to visit the Spanish Civil War. [1] Nationalists ran the groups as a way to garner support for their leaders from abroad which was interesting but what really pulled me in is the idea of someone buying a ticket for a week long tour of a war… Ever since then I have been seeking more information about battlefield tourism in the context of someone visiting an active or very recent scene of war.

Part of the fascination is because I myself am a battlefield tourist – but I always have several decades or centuries between my visit and the battle in question. I understand the desire to acknowledge the history of a space and have a lot of respect for how witnessing a physical location changes your perspective on events. (For instance, when I stood marveling at the cliffs at Pont du Hoc after learning about Americans needing to improvise a way to climb them when their equipment got too wet to use it as they did in training.)

So what did I find in London? Two volumes of a series produced by Michelin and dedicated “In memory of the Michelin employees and workmen who died gloriously for their country” (in this case in World War I) written while the war was still going on and intended for those traveling just after its end.

My editions cover Rheims and the Marne and the level of detail is astonishing– there are photographs, maps, and written descriptions of where to go and what to see. And what is there to see you might ask? Well Michelin covers all the bases.  The guides have a series of before and after photos that cover what used to be in each area alongside photographs of the buildings destroyed or damaged by the war. They include a brief political and historical overview of the war and the subject battlefield in particular. They also cover what the war has left behind – remains of POW camps are mentioned as are graveyards for soldiers whose remains could not make it home. And of course, they are still tour guides – meaning they have hotel recommendations and tips on where to get your car serviced.  

The tone of the books is also worth noting. Some battlefield tourism has a disturbing level of commercialism – for instance immediately following the battle of Waterloo tourists eagerly came to find remnants of the fight and locals quickly came up with a way to fake souvenirs when the real ones ran out.[2] The forward to the Marne guide seems aware of battlefield pickers and other less thoughtful ways to approach this type of travel and the guide tries to persuade them to think differently:

“Such a visit should be a pilgrimage, not merely a journey across a ravaged land. Seeing is not enough, one must understand: a ruin is more moving when one knows what has caused it; a stretch of country which might seem dull and uninteresting to the unenlightened eye, becomes transformed at the thought of the battles which have raged there.”

I remember when a guide in Normandy drove us to a “dull” stretch of land and pulled out maps and photos to show how the battle once played out. We visited a half-finished German bunker where the unused bags of concrete had turned into strange fossils when the construction was suddenly halted by the Allied invasion. I’ve been to Culloden and followed the tour guide between the flags marking the locations of British and Jacobite forces and trying to imagine the weather and the visibility and the sounds and smells. I’ve been to Gettysburg and tried to ignore the memorials and think about what the field looked like on the day.

People have clearly always been drawn to battlefields and I’m sure I’m going to continue to tour them long after the fighting is over – but clearly many people (for a long time) have desired to experience a different side of the battlefield. Even today you can book a trip to Ukraine even as it actively fights off the Russian invasion.[3] One day when I visit the Marne or Rheims I will make sure to not only have my modern day guide book (always Rick Steves) but will bring these with me as well for a glimpse of a moment in history when travelers were trying to process the violence that has just been inflected on both humanity and the land. It will be a remarkable tour.

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[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/ahr.110.5.1399

[2] https://blog.nms.ac.uk/2015/09/20/waterloo-battlefield-tourism/

[3] https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/ukraine-travel-company-tourists/index.html?utm_source=fbCNN&utm_content=2022-08-09T20%3A30%3A09&utm_medium=social&utm_term=link&fbclid=IwAR2clzeb4thRIlOMPGu7lIRn2-oi3F9D3QJFpVDqNUOI382gejYMQcirAQI