Killing Time E-Book

Nicholas J Saunders

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

The Great War of 1914-1918 now stands at the furthest edge of living memory. And yet, hardly a month passes without some dramatic and sometimes tragic discovery being made along the old killing fields of the Western Front. Graves of British soldiers buried during battle – still lying in rows seemingly arm in arm or found crouching at the entrance to a dugout; whole 'underground cities' of trenches, dugouts and shelters have been preserved in the mud; field hospitals carved out of the chalk country of the Somme marked with graffiti; unexploded bombs and gas canisters – all of these are the poignant and sometimes deadly legacies of a war we can never forget. Killing Time digs beneath the surface of war to uncover the living reality left behind. Nicholas J. Saunders brings together a wealth of discoveries to offer fresh insights into the human and often barbaric aspect of warfare. He uses discoveries in the trenches, family photographs, diaries and souvenirs to give the dead a voice. You cannot fail to be fascinated and moved by what he unearths.

Leseprobe

In memory of Bob Craig (1950–2006)

Acknowledgements

It is inevitable that a book such as this relies to an overwhelming extent on the professional work, advice, comments and goodwill of many colleagues from a wide range of disciplines, as well as on the support of family, and the companionship of personal friends. I owe a great debt to all the individuals listed below, whose cooperation, expertise, insights and friendship have greatly influenced my own work, and made this book possible. None of them is responsible for what I have made of their many generosities.

As it would be invidious as well as impossible to rank these individuals according to my gratitude, I list them here in alphabetical order: Frédéric Adam, Zeyad al-Salameen, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Marco Balbi, Annette Becker, Barbara Bender, Bob Bewley, Franky Bostyn, Jean Bourgeois, Isabelle Brandauer, James Brazier, Andy Brockman, Graham Brown, Martin Brown, David Cameron, John Carman, Piet Chielens, Željko Cimpric, Hugh Clout, David Cohen, Thomas Compère-Morel, Paul Cornish, Susan Daniels, Janiek Degryse, Anna Gow, Armando De Guio, Mark Dennis, Roger De Smul, Dominiek Dendooven, Aleks Deseyne, Yves Desfossés, Jan Dewilde, Marc Dewilde, Mike Dolamore, Nils Fabiansson, Hani Falahat, Neil Faulkner, David Field, Paola Filippucci, Philippe Gorczynski, Paul Gough, Fabio Gygi, Andy Hawkins, Italo Hellmann, Gary Hollingsworth, Patrik Indevuyst, Alain Jacques, David Kenyon, Arlene King, Joe Lahae, Mathieu de Meyer, Tom Morgan, Richard Osgood, Jon Price, Pedro Pype, Paul Reed, Rik Ryon, Jacques Schier, John Schofield, Aurel Sercu, Mansour Shqiarat, Ivan Sinnaeve, Tony Spagnoly, Harald Stadler, Birger Stichelbaut, David Thorpe, Christopher Tilley, Senior Captain A. Vander Mast, Johan Vandewalle, Gabriel Versavel, Carol Walker, Roger Ward, Patrice Warin, the late Marian Wenzel, John Winterburn, and John Woolsgrove, as well as www.greatwar.be and www.suffolkchurches.co.uk.

As always, I owe a great debt to my wife, Pauline, my children, Roxanne and Alexander, my parents, Geoff and Pat Saunders, and, ultimately, to my grandfathers, Alfred William Saunders of the King’s Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster) and Matthew Inkerman Chorley of the South Lancashire Regiment. Both fought in the First World War and survived. I can only imagine what they would have thought about the idea that the war that forged them as young men would, almost within their own lifetimes, become a part of archaeology.

Contents

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1Excavating Memories: Great War Archaeology

2Bodies of Metal, Shells of Memory

3Landscapes of Memory

4Bones of the Somme

5Beneath Flanders Fields

6Legacies and Visions of War

7Beyond the Western Front

8Recent Developments

References

Copyright

Introduction

The First World War remains ambiguously ‘recent’ in the European imagination – hovering above the border where oral history, military history and cultural history meet individual and collective memories. Its objects live on in people’s homes, in museums and in salesrooms, and its legacies permeate the tortuous politics of identity, via nationalism and ethnicity, across Europe and beyond. The war exists also in the conjoined worlds of tourism and heritage, with ever-increasing numbers of visitors to its battlefields and museums, especially along the old Western Front of Belgium and France – the focus of this book.

Yet, until recently, almost nothing that we knew of the First World War (the Great War) had come from beneath the soil, from innumerable kilometres of now subterranean trenches, dugouts, hospitals, bomb craters, tunnels and impromptu battlefield graves. It is as if the idea of an archaeology of the war was somehow beyond reach, or perhaps not worth bothering about, as everything we needed to know could be gleaned from the historical accounts of its many battles, and their tragic cost in human lives and suffering. Was the First World War suitable for archaeological excavation? Was it not too recent? Could archaeology tell us anything new?

Times change, and ideas and attitudes change with them. The past ten years have seen extraordinary developments in what can now be called, without fear of contradiction, the archaeology of the First World War. A decade ago it seemed to me, and to others, that here was a vast new field of archaeological (and anthropological) research that had hardly been considered, far less acted upon. I remember tramping the battlefields of the Western Front in all weathers, searching for examples of curious objects called trench art – three-dimensional items made by soldiers and civilians (often as souvenirs) during and after the war – and encountering landscapes and material culture that had only ever been in the background of the great military histories of the war.

I heard dark rumours of clandestine battlefield digging, of soldiers’ bodies torn from the earth and stripped of their equipment and personal possessions, and of almost mythical private collections of the trench art I sought, and of other objects from the war. I wandered through museums, large and small, in which there was a wealth of objects waiting to be studied, and across old battlefield landscapes whose archaeology had only fleetingly been touched, and whose anthropological dimension had hardly even been considered. And, in countless interviews, I came across ideas, stories, insights and attitudes that seemed to move effortlessly back and forth between the trench art I had come to study, family experiences and memories of the war, and the surface worlds and underground landscapes of the conflict. Running through all these varied aspects like an electric current were the lives of real people. They had names, signatures and faces, and their letters, photographs and objects seemed to me to announce a new kind of archaeology – that of the recent historical past in time of conflict.

Great War archaeology is a complex endeavour. In one sense, it is a kind of industrial archaeology, whose strata are saturated with mass-produced artefacts of the twentieth century – an overwhelming sea of materiality that seems to mock the archaeologist’s quest for meaningful patternings of objects. In another sense, it is historical archaeology, informed by a wealth of written documents on every conceivable aspect of the conflict, from trench life to global military strategy, from the personal meanings of memorabilia to the international consequences of its aftermath. It is also social archaeology, public archaeology, and anthropological archaeology, and one of the many so-called ‘archaeologies of the contemporary past’.

Great War archaeology is all of these and more, for it deals with the actions and consequences of modern industrialised war on a global scale. It is the archaeology of new worlds brought into being at terrible cost between 1914 and 1918 – worlds that have transformed themselves ever since, within which we still live today, and with whose legacies we still struggle, whether in Bosnia, Gaza or Iraq.

This book focuses mainly on the old battlefields of the Western Front, for it is here that most archaeology and anthropology has been carried out, and it is here also that the issues of heritage and tourism are currently most accessible. It is here, too, that younger generations are being motivated as much by what lies beneath the battlefields, and what this tells us of the human experience of war, as previous generations were (and still are) by the more traditional historical accounts of the First World War’s many iconic battles. Great War archaeology is, ultimately, the archaeology of us, and it is only just beginning.

CHAPTER 1

Excavating Memories: Great War Archaeology

The passage of time has all but extinguished any living memory of the Great War of 1914-1918, but the experiences of those who fought in the trenches of the Somme in northern France, and around the town of Ypres in Belgian Flanders, have since become epic history and the stuff of legend.

Today, hardly a month passes without some dramatic and often poignant discovery along the old killing fields of the Western Front in France and Belgium. Evocative burials of British, French or German soldiers buried during battle and then forgotten – lying in rows seemingly arm in arm, interred in a makeshift shell-crater grave, or found still crouching after eighty-five years at the entrance to a dugout. Whole ‘underground cities’ of trenches, dugouts, galleries and shelters lie preserved beneath the mud of Flanders – sometimes with newspapers, blankets and socks scattered where they were left. Underground field hospitals carved into the chalk country of Artois and Picardy in France also survive, as do hundreds of kilometres of tunnels scratched with graffiti by long-dead hands. Most threatening of all, countless tons of volatile bombs and gas canisters still wait for a chance to explode. Almost a century after the war ended, on 11 November 1918, there is an annual loss of life caused by this deadly legacy of the ‘war to end all wars’.

The living reality of the First World War today belongs increasingly to archaeology. When the last old soldier passes away, anything new about the war will, almost by definition, belong in the realm of the archaeologist. Yet, while there are innumerable books on the military history of the war, its battles, its generals, and its cultural and economic legacies, there is not a single book on the modern scientific archaeology of the world’s first industrialised global conflict.

This book, unique today, but surely not for long, brings together for the first time widely scattered archaeological discoveries of the First World War (many not published in English), and offers new insights into the human dimension of the conflict. It shows how the archaeology of the war is a new kind of archaeology – one that includes not only the excavation of battlefields, but also its personal and emotional dimensions – a social archaeology that excavates people’s lives, and that can take place in their own homes, museums, car-boot sales, on the Internet, and in public and private collections of war memorabilia.

Unlike other kinds of archaeology, Great War archaeology connects directly to virtually every family in Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany and Austria, as well as to hundreds of thousands of others around the world, whose great-grandfathers and great-uncles fought in the trenches of the Western Front and beyond. Countless families preserve photographs, diaries and souvenirs of the First World War – objects as eloquent as anything found on the battlefields today – and all speak of ordinary men living extraordinary lives in momentous times.

During the past thirty years, archaeology has changed beyond all recognition. Today, archaeologists are concerned as much with what is called the ‘contemporary past’ as with deep prehistory or the worlds of classical antiquity. The archaeology of conflict, much influenced by anthropology, offers unique perspectives on the recent past by investigating the physical remains of everyday life – of battles won and lost, of national tragedy and individual struggle. Modern archaeology yields surprising personal and often poignant insights into people’s lives over the past hundred years as well as in ancient times.

The archaeology of the First World War is the newest of these archaeologies of the contemporary or recent past. It tells a different story of the war from unexpected points of view, and shows how we create the past we desire. It is also a fast-developing subject, and one that is spearheading the advance to a greater goal – the archaeology of all twentieth-century conflict. The picture that archaeology reveals of war illustrates what it means to be human in that most fundamental and ironic invention of modern civilisation – industrialised conflict.

ARCHAEOLOGYANDTHE FIRST WORLD WAR

The birth and development of a modern archaeology of the First World War is a curiously tangled affair, lasting almost a century, and, appropriately, not without its own internal conflicts and rivalries. Here, four notional phases are identified, less as a strict chronology that all must agree upon, and more as a way of beginning to understand Great War archaeology. Each of these phases is as notable for its broader anthropological dimension as it is for its contribution to the archaeology of conflict. The first phase belongs to the period of the war itself, 1914–18, the second to the years 1919–90, the third to the decade of the 1990s and the early 2000s, and the fourth from 2002 to the present. In this book, this timeline relates mainly, but not exclusively, to the Western Front (and includes different developments in France and Belgium). Although some examples are taken from other theatres of the war, similar chronologies for the Eastern Front, Italy, the Balkans, Gallipoli, and the Middle East have not yet been suggested. The outline offered here is neither hard and fast, nor universally applicable, and it is not meant to be. It is a general framework, designed to throw light on the complex origins and development of Great War archaeology, its connections with anthropology, history and other disciplines, and its potential for changing our ideas of what modern archaeology is about, and what it can achieve.

Phase 1: 1914–18

The Western Front was, in effect, a parallel set of the two longest archaeological trenches in history – one Allied, the other German. These stretched some 500km from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border, and were supplemented by dugouts, underground tunnels and extensive systems of support trenches cut at right angles to the front line. It is estimated that the French army alone dug 10,000km of trenches (Barbusse 2003: 25). It is possible that more earth was dug, more archaeological sites uncovered, more stratigraphy revealed, and more ancient artefacts discovered during the four years of the war than at any time before or since. To this must be added the devastation of landscape and towns caused by four years of artillery bombardment by both sides, which itself, and ironically, opened up previously unknown (or long-forgotten) archaeological areas. Nevertheless, in both instances, war conditions meant that much of this newly discovered archaeological data went unrecorded or was subsequently lost.

This was clearly a different kind of archaeology. It was not the archaeology of the ongoing war itself, but rather a miscellany of discoveries of traditional archaeological kinds, revealed as a byproduct of industrialised conflict. Never before had there been the strategic conditions or the weapons that cut open the landscape across such vast areas as happened between 1914 and 1918.

Artillery barrage and the digging of trenches uncovered Gallo-Roman and medieval remains in built-up areas, and revealed traces of older prehistory in open country. This early relationship between war and archaeology is illustrated by the link between the intensity of fighting and the discovery of archaeological remains. Prominent in this respect was the rapid German advance across the Somme battlefield in spring 1918 – part of the so-called Kaiserschlacht (Kaiser’s Battle).

In response to the German advance, Captain J.B. Frost of the Royal Engineers dug defensive trenches at Harponville on the Somme in April, and discovered a Neolithic axe, which is now in the Imperial War Museum, London. Similarly, Captain Francis Buckley of the Northumberland Fusiliers supervised the digging of trenches at Coigneux, some 6 miles behind the British lines southwest of Arras. Coigneux was reinforced by these trenches, known as the ‘Red Line’, though, as Buckley observed, they were never used. Inspecting these freshly dug and empty Red Line trenches, Buckley discovered Palaeolithic (Mousterian) artefacts, and noted that that, ‘For about 15 or 20 yards along the parapets there was a good sprinkling of implements, some recently broken and some whole…. [including] a hand axe …, a typical Levallois flake and a number of scrapers’ (Buckley 1920–1: 4). Buckley would spend over three years in France and Belgium, during which time he collected many prehistoric ‘flints’.

The German offensive failed, and in August the Allies began pushing them back east across the Somme battlefield to the defensive position known as the Hindenburg Line. As the Germans retreated, artillery fire left new landscapes pitted with craters, in one of which, at Richcourt-les-Bapaume, a British soldier picked up a prehistoric flint tool. A photograph of this implement, labelled ‘War Souvenir Flint’ and ‘French microlith (Late Cave Period)’, is now in the Tolson Memorial Museum in Huddersfield.

German and French soldiers were also involved in similar activities. At Juvincourt-Damary, in the French department of the Aisne, German soldiers digging trenches under cover of night kept an eagle eye on their excavations, hoping to find metal scrap from enemy bombardments that they could sell or exchange for a profit. On one occasion, they discovered a Bronze Age trove of axe-heads, projectiles, knives and jewellery, which they quickly divided up among themselves and eventually took back to Germany (Niethammer 1923; Jockenhövel and Smolla 1975: 289–90).

An equally dramatic discovery was recorded by the French soldier-author Henri Barbusse, whose literary account of his war experiences was published as Under Fire in 1917, and became a bestseller. In one passage, where Barbusse and his comrade Tulacque are digging tunnels, Tulacque shows him a Neolithic or Bronze Age bone-hafted flint axe which he had found in a subterranean gallery the previous night, and which he was using in preference to the standard-issue army axe (Barbusse 1988: 10; 2003: 12). In this instance, the war had led to the discovery of a prehistoric artefact that had originally been used to dig subterranean galleries, and was now being reused for the same purpose, in war conditions, more than three thousand years later.

On the Eastern Front also, digging trenches, dugouts and fortifications uncovered numerous archaeological remains, from prehistoric tools and burials to caches of more recent coins, often only centimetres beneath the surface. Dynamiting the ground for laying fortification foundations produced showers of Bronze Age and Iron Age bones and artefacts, and numerous army newspapers reported on the prehistoric artefacts that were found during trench digging (Liulevicius 2000: 37–8). The battlezone landscape itself was a virtually untouched (and uninvestigated) palimpsest of prehistoric remains – hundreds of hillforts, and innumerable survivals of pre-Christian beliefs commemorated as Christianised roadside crosses (ibid.) and other expressions of peasant soldier Christian faith. In Macedonia, in northern Greece – then still part of the Ottoman Empire – the wartime activities of Allied forces (particularly the French and British) based in and around Thessaloniki (Salonica) not only uncovered previously unknown archaeological sites, but actively stimulated serious archaeological research as well as the inevitable looting (Saunders n.d.).

The French and British, though wartime allies, could not resist competing with each other in the guise of archaeology. The French set up a wartime archaeological service, identified and excavated many sites, and displayed the finds to their troops (Mazower 2004: 316–17). The British High Command responded in kind, and ordered that all discoveries made while digging trenches and dugouts be reported to military headquarters. Meanwhile, the soldiers themselves scavenged the prehistoric tumuli of the region (ibid.). Soldiers of the Black Watch, Cheshires and Wiltshires discovered whole prehistoric cemeteries, burials with jewellery, and innumerable artefacts. Even rock-cut tombs above the ancient Macedonian city of Amphipolis by the River Strymon were investigated by the Royal Army Medical Corps when an enemy artillery barrage unexpectedly opened up a Hellenistic tomb dating to around 200 BC (Saunders n.d.).

Discoveries were also made away from the battlefields, in areas that were, nevertheless, still places affected by conflict. Arguably one of the best-known examples was the investigation by the archaeologist and writer Jacquetta Hawkes of an archaeological site first revealed by the construction of a prisoner-of-war camp on Jersey in the Channel Islands (Finn 2005: 126–7). Hawkes published her findings in 1939, and included a drawing of flints from ‘chipping areas’ within a prisoner-of-war camp at Les Blanches Banques that had been used between 1915 and 1919. The ground had been disturbed by building, occupation and abandonment of the camp, and revealed a large area of prehistoric occupation with flints, pottery, stone implements and shell middens dating to the end of what was then called the megalithic period (i.e. the late Neolithic, early Bronze Age) (Hawkes 1939: 66 n. 9, 179–80, n. 9). In the same way as in the battlezones, wartime activity had served to ‘excavate’ archaeological remains.

From the Western and Eastern fronts, south to Turkey, Mesopotamia and Egypt, the war was conducted above and below ground in landscapes of imposing (and sometimes hitherto unknown) archaeological monuments. These archaeological discoveries were incidental, confined to sites and artefacts revealed only by wartime activities. Events during this period had a direct relationship to archaeology itself, and to the beginnings of Great War archaeology. The war had uncovered large numbers of previously unknown archaeological sites and significant quantities of artefacts, and so added to traditional archaeology’s knowledge of the past.

Importantly, the conflict also randomly mixed pre-war archaeological strata with levels of destruction of historic and contemporary buildings, war materiel, unexploded ordnance and human remains. This hybrid layer could take many forms. The constants were traces of war-related activities, destruction, bodies and weaponry; while the variables were the older remains of the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age or Iron Age periods, either on their own, or in combination. This new, infinitely variable (and sometimes potentially lethal) hybrid layer belonged to the war itself, and is the focus of Great War archaeology.

Phase 2: 1919–90

In the war’s aftermath, the old battlezones of the Western Front were gradually reclaimed through bomb clearance and reconstruction – activities that together created a new shallow layer of civilian reoccupation overlying the war level, and dating mainly to the 1920s and 1930s (Clout 1996). In addition, the Imperial War Graves Commission, now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), scoured the battlefields locating individual bodies for identification and burial, and consolidating small battlefield cemeteries into larger ones (Longworth 1985). Much of this activity is what today would be called forensic archaeology, although it was not seen in this way at the time. The bodies located during these official activities were respectfully reburied in CWGC cemeteries, but there were other, more clandestine and less respectful activities that occurred alongside them.

Refugees returning to their destroyed villages and poisoned farmlands were confronted with dire economic circumstances in which they were unable immediately to resume their pre-war lives, and had to find alternative ways of making a living. One quickly acquired habit was searching the battlefields for military scrap, unfired munitions and miscellaneous war materiel, which could be sold to the authorities, or – sometimes in its raw state, sometimes made into ‘trench-art’ objects – sold as souvenirs to the burgeoning numbers of battlefield pilgrims and tourists who began arriving in 1919. During the 1920s and 1930s, searching and clearing the battlefields became a newly invented ‘tradition’ for the local inhabitants of an area, begun in childhood, continued when adult, and passed on in turn to their own children.

While the war was far too recent for professional archaeologists to consider it worthy of study, and while local digging and collecting of battlefield objects was probably never seen in any sense as archaeology, these activities helped lay the foundations for the modern archaeology of the war that is now emerging. Some individuals during this time (and still today) specialised in locating human remains and stripping them of their military equipment and personal belongings – German helmets, firearms, uniforms, regimental badges and insignia were especially sought, and became increasingly valuable over time. By virtue of the clandestine nature of this activity, the authorities were usually not informed, and the human remains themselves were quickly and unceremoniously reburied. It is not surprising that little is known about these activities, and even less written.

Over some seventy years, from 1919 to around 1990, purposeful digging on battlefields in order to find Great War objects was mainly the preserve of French and Belgians, who knew and often owned their local landscapes, traded their finds through regional networks of militaria fairs, and put together often impressive personal collections of objects. These individuals often formed the nucleus of informal groups of like-minded friends who would go to dig a promising spot in search of saleable items. These groups were the precursors of a new generation which, during the 1990s, would establish more formal ‘associations’ whose interest was as much in Great War history as it was in finding objects to sell. Partly stimulated by the expanding market in such memorabilia (and an increasing general interest in the war itself), the 1960s saw numbers of British enthusiasts visiting the battlefields, parking their cars by the side of a field, and setting to work with shovels, and occasionally a metal-detector.

Throughout this whole period, professional and academic archaeology did not recognise the First World War as archaeological heritage. The partial exception to this was in France, where rescue digs in advance of the construction of motorways, the high-speed TGV rail link to Paris and urban development occasionally required formal excavation of a Great War site. It was during the last decade of this period, the 1980s, that an unofficial kind of battlefield archaeology began to take shape, distinguished by the fact that the diggers (mainly local people and a few British enthusiasts) were amateurs, whose enthusiasm stemmed from their knowledge of military history, not archaeology. The term ‘battlefield archaeologist’ began to be heard along the Western Front, though in fact their activities often amounted to little more than a weekend hobby.

These individuals were not looters, and their digging had a serious purpose. Yet they did not replace the opportunistic battlefield scavengers who continued their search for bodies and artefacts. Indeed, by opening up and publicising their digs, amateur groups often alerted the less scrupulous, who would hover out of sight until the diggers left, and then raid the site under cover of darkness. The idea that these latter individuals were, in a general sense, desecrating their own ancestors’ remains, or destroying a virtually pan-European archaeological heritage, seems not to have occurred to them. It seems that annually mourning the dead on 11 November was not seen as inconsistent with despoiling the remains of ‘the missing’ in pursuit of profit.

Serious-minded, but still informal, amateur groups, as well as the battlefield scavengers, could both, on occasion, describe themselves as ‘battlefield archaeologists’ – though the term had little to do with archaeology. It seems to have become increasingly popular towards the end of the 1980s, adopted by, and indiscriminately applied to, all who ‘investigated’ battlefields. It is likely that the reputations of the more serious-minded amateurs suffered by sharing this designation with the looters.

Whatever their intentions, the increasing numbers and different kinds of ‘battlefield archaeologists’ drew support and inspiration from the publication in 1987 of a book entitled Battlefield Archaeology by the war historian John Laffin. While Laffin’s extensive knowledge of the war was undeniable (he was a prolific author of military history), his knowledge of archaeology was lamentable, and his definition of the subject little more than a self-serving looter’s charter. His view that there was nothing sacreligious about digging up battlefield relics was reinforced by a belief that a tourist needed only a guidebook to become an archaeologist, and that battlefield archaeologists should search for the places where Victoria Crosses were won (Laffin 1987: 10, 70). Such bizarre notions were tastelessly illustrated by a photograph of two human teeth and a finger bone that he had dug up, alongside a poem inspired by their discovery. While it was no surprise that the book lacked a single archaeological reference, it was more worrying that it passed virtually unnoticed and uncriticised by professional archaeologists, who still at this time did not regard the war as an appropriate subject for archaeological investigation.

Phase 3: 1990–2001

The penultimate phase in the development of Great War archaeology began during the early 1990s, when the hitherto loose-knit groups of amateur diggers in Belgian Flanders began to adopt a more formal identity, sometimes as associations. These groups were composed of a heterogeneous mix of enthusiasts: some just liked digging, others specialised in military history; some were experts in military uniforms and equipment, others in weapons and munitions, and some in the development of military technologies. Several were motivated by a sense of moral responsibility to find the remains of those who had fallen on the battlefields. All freely admitted they were amateurs, not professionals, and diggers rather than excavators.

Interestingly, while this period saw a quickening of the pace of digging battlefields, this development took a different path in Belgium than it did in France. Also important at this time was the international dissemination of a scattered literature on the many large and small investigations occurring along the old Western Front – a service made possible only by the developing technology of the Internet. In August 2000, the Swedish archaeologist Nils Fabiansson launched a website called ‘The Archaeology of the Western Front 1914–1918’ which was to last until August 2005 (Fabiansson 2000–2005). For these critical five years in the development of Great War archaeology, Fabiansson chronicled almost every activity that took place, and the website played a central role in bringing together and informing everyone concerned with excavating Great War sites.

In Belgium, there were several semi-formal groups of amateur ‘battlefield archaeologists’ that thrived in part because at that time there was little official archaeological involvement in war heritage. It was, in a sense, a free market, where, once the landowner’s permission was obtained, digging could take place almost anywhere, constrained only by manpower, enthusiasm, finances and the weather. Near Ypres, in the centre of the old Ypres Salient battlefield, one local group made a virtue of necessity, and called themselves ‘The Diggers’. They began digging in 1992, and soon focused their attention on an area of open fields opposite the town of Boezinge, north of Ypres, part of an expanding industrial estate. This area, which had not been developed since the end of the First World War, was the site of the first German gas attack in 1915.

The Diggers worked under licence from Belgium’s Institute for Archaeological Heritage (IAP), whose professional archaeologists kept a watching brief on their activities. The Diggers used metal-detectors in their investigations, kept the local police informed of any discovery of human remains, and handed over these remains to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for reburial in military cemeteries. They also maintained a good working relationship with the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, to which they donated some of their artefacts (Sercu 2001; and see Smith 1999). The Diggers were not alone in conducting such excavations. Another group, calling itself the ‘Association for Battlefield Archaeology in Flanders’ (ABAF), began its own ad hoc series of digs in the Ypres Salient in 1999. ABAF was more international in its composition, with some members having worked with The Diggers; others were local Great War enthusiasts, and several also came from the United Kingdom. While none of ABAF’s members were professional archaeologists, several had academic training in other disciplines.

ABAF dug at various locations around Ypres, notably at Bayernwald (Croonaert Wood) near Wijtschate, and ‘Beecham Dugout’, near Tyne Cot cemetery outside Passchendaele. On both occasions, the group published detailed accounts of their researches in the form of Dutch-language books that brought together archival and archaeological data (Bostyn 1999; Bostyn and Vancoillie 2000). They made detailed plans, collected and numbered their finds, and kept an often eerily beautiful photographic record of their work underground. Nevertheless, differences of opinion between ABAF, The Diggers and other influential bodies, as well within these groups, soon came to the fore, and in late 2000, ABAF ceased its fieldwork investigations. Only several years later, and after several personnel changes, would a ‘new’ reconstituted ABAF again be archaeologically active, by which time the official attitudes and legal constraints had changed considerably.

Also, in late 2000, The Diggers’ activities were scandalised in a British television programme and in the British press (Tyson 2000; Harvey 2000a, 2000b; Tweedie 2000). This led to official statements by the Belgian government, and talk of an inquiry by the British government. The situation was disappointing for Great War archaeology. For over eighty years, unauthorised battlefield diggings had attracted little comment or official sanction. Long-ignored issues concerning who should excavate what and how, and the treatment of the dead and their artefacts, had suddenly exploded, dramatically politicising the archaeology of the First World War in Belgium. Further dissension followed when ABAF personnel investigated extensive Great War tunnels and dugouts beneath the Belgian coastal town of Nieuwpoort that had serious implications for subsidence and compensation (Doyle et al. 2001). However, disagreements between the investigators, military experts, and local and national Belgian politicians led to rancorous exchanges and little has happened since.

The passions aroused by the activities of The Diggers and ABAF during the 1990s were the background for a decisive shift in official attitudes towards acknowledging the region’s Great War remains as a valued and valuable part of Belgian Flanders’ archaeological heritage. This change, while restricted to Belgium, nevertheless marks the beginning of phase 4.

In France during the 1990s, events took a different course from those in Belgium. Regional Archaeological Services in France operate as part of the local Direction régionale des affaires culturelles (DRAC). Their responsibility is for their region’s total archaeological heritage, from prehistory to recent times. French attitudes to Great War sites have been shaped by the practical experience of carrying out their duty to investigate all archaeological heritage. This has not been a proactive interest inasmuch as there has never been an official group of professional DRAC archaeologists dedicated to excavating First World War remains. Great War sites have been investigated as part of rescue excavations – most commonly during the construction of the TGV train link from Calais to Paris, and various motorways that have cut across the old Somme battlefield and elsewhere (Desfossés 1999). Occasionally, traditional archaeology and Great War archaeology have become entangled, as when the remains of twenty-four Royal Fusiliers were found by archaeologists investigating a multi-period (though mainly Gallo-Roman) site at Monchy-le-Preux near Arras.

The attitude of French professional archaeologists has been pragmatic, and they have developed a unique expertise in excavating such sites and publishing the results (Historial de la Grande Guerre 1999; Desfossés and Jacques 2000). The most publicised investigation to date is the 1991 excavation of twenty-one bodies of French soldiers at Saint-Rémy-la-Calonne, where the investigation was contentious because of the presence among the dead of the French novelist Alain-Fournier (Adam 1991, 1999). More recently, the remains of German soldiers have been found at Gavrelle, and of British soldiers at Le Point du Jour, both outside Arras (Desfossés and Jacques 2000: 35). These discoveries are discussed in Chapter 5.

The French experience has differed from the Belgian one in this respect, and, while there are many specialist groups in France, their interest lies in various aspects of Great War military history, rather than in forming groups of amateur ‘battlefield archaeologists’. The only similar group is the Association Souvenir Bataille de Fromelles, which includes French and Belgian enthusiasts who investigate remains near the French village of Fromelles, and maintain a small but important museum in the local town hall. Occasionally, isolated finds occur whose investigation crosses the boundary between military history and archaeology. The most famous example was the discovery of a British tank near the village of Flesquières, which was excavated in 1998 and is awaiting restoration.

Unlike in Belgium (until 2002–3), professional, amateur and mixed professional–amateur groups have coexisted in France since the 1990s. What has been noticeable is the presence of foreign groups, often with a core of professionals, who have been involved in more sustained research. The Durand Group of mainly British expert military and civilian volunteers has been investigating underground tunnels at Vimy Ridge since 1997. They have specialised in archaeological and photographic surveying and mapping, the defusing of unexploded mines, and the pioneering of non-destructive remote sensing surveys of battlefields (Watkins 1998; Dolamore 2000).

Perhaps the best-known foreign excavation in France has been the ‘Ocean Villas Project’ at Auchonvillers on the Somme (OVPW 2001). It was conducted by a British team composed of a professional archaeologist, several military historians, and volunteers. Its aim was to investigate communication trenches and a cellar used by British soldiers during the war, and to reconstruct and present them as part of a tourist feature associated with a tearoom and guest house for battlefield visitors. Nearby, at Beaumont-Hamel, a joint Canadian and French team excavated the site of a proposed car park adjacent to the preserved battlefield landscape of Newfoundland Memorial Park in 1998 (Piédalue 1998). In both instances, it was battlefield tourism that stimulated archaeological investigation, and that itself became part of a wider debate on Great War heritage and cultural memory. Anthropological concerns lay at the heart of these archaeological developments.

As the 1990s drew to a close, it was a sign of changing times and attitudes in France that the French First World War scholarly journal, 14/18: Aujourd’hui. Today. Heute, dedicated its second issue almost exclusively to the beginnings of an archaeology of the war (Historial de la Grande Guerre 1999). Although it provided a snapshot of ideas and discoveries rather than an in-depth analysis, it was nevertheless a landmark publication that presented original and creative thinking about what an archaeology of the First World War might look like. Every article raised important points, a fact made more remarkable in that half of the authors were historians not archaeologists, and those who were archaeologists were not Great War specialists (although they were becoming so). Eminent scholars such as Alain Schnapp, Annette Becker, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Gerd Krumeich argued the need for an archaeology of the First World War, while archaeologists Yves Desfossés and Frédéric Adam offered timely archaeological case studies that illustrated this need, and these were commented on from an anthropological perspective by Claire Reverchon, Pierre Gaudin and Henri Duday. Considered together, these diverse articles were a powerful call to arms.

Phase 4: 2002–present

By the end of 2001, Great War archaeology had temporarily stalled in Belgium with the adverse publicity surrounding the amateur groups, but continued in France on the same path as during the 1990s. Now, new forces were coming into play: the professionalisation of Great War archaeology in Belgium, and the advent of ‘television archaeology’ in France and Belgium.

In Belgium, the initial stimulus for a dramatic change of attitude was the survey and excavation by the Institute for Archaeological Heritage in the area known as Pilckem Ridge in the middle of the Ypres Salient battlefield. Pilckem Ridge saw fierce fighting and terrible losses on both sides during the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) between July and August 1917, and lay on the route of an extension to the A19 motorway.

The Institute’s archaeologists began conducting reconnaissance in the area in 2002, and the results quickly demonstrated the need for a fully fledged professional archaeological investigation. Their preliminary research involved an extensive survey of the literature, trench maps and contemporary 1914–18 aerial photographs. Discovered trench systems, barbed-wire entanglements and dugouts were plotted on modern maps, and fieldwalking filled in the picture by locating the remains of bunkers and concentrations of other wartime material. This work, along with information gained by interviewing local residents, identified nine zones for detailed archaeological along the route of the planned A19 extension. The effect of the Pilckem Ridge survey was to usher in a new, official, legally constituted and totally professional archaeology of the war under the aegis of the Institute for Archaeological Heritage.

On 10 November 2003, the Belgian minister Paul van Grembergen officially opened the Department of First World War Archaeology as part of the Institute for Archaeological Heritage (Dewilde et al. 2004). The new department had the support of Flemish universities, the Belgian Army’s Service for the Disposal and Demolition of Explosives (DOVO), as well as groups of amateur diggers and historians, and a wide range of international collaborators. Its aim was to undertake archaeological research, compile inventories and manage Great War sites, as well as direct, monitor and coordinate the various private activities and initiatives undertaken by museums, amateur diggers, historians and other interested parties.

In this way, the hitherto fragmented wealth of expertise and specialised knowledge of individuals and amateur groups would not be lost, but rather made available to the department’s legal and professional framework for conducting modern scientific archaeological investigations. It was further hoped that recognition of the heritage value of the region’s Great War remains would stimulate different kinds of cultural and tourism-related initiatives. The year 2003 saw the culmination of digging activities in Belgian Flanders that had begun between 1914 and 1918. More widely, it was arguably the most important single advance in investigating the material culture of the First World War along the Western Front in over eighty years.