Cemeteries of the First World War: Insights from visitor books

Abstract

This study concerns some of the military cemeteries that were built in Belgium and France by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission following the First World War of 1914–18. The cemeteries articulate one of the main social memories of the war to remember the dead individually. The performance of tourists and pilgrims in their visits to the cemeteries can be seen as ritual behaviour which helps to perpetuate the memories. The visitor books in 39 cemeteries were examined in order to identify reasons for visitation and patterns across sites. Three clusters were formed using the percentage of visitor book entries in which visitors made reference to specific graves. Half of the cemeteries formed into a cluster which had high visitation but where less than five percent of visitor book entries referred to particular graves. Most of these cemeteries were located close to well-known sites, battlefields or national memorials. A small cluster of seven cemeteries showed relatively low visitation but up to sixty percent of visitors sought a particular grave. The data indicated that relationships between national identity and particular cemeteries were important.