Battlefields and cemeteries : the changing face of First World War battlefield tourism 1914-1929

1Alexander Douglas Gillespie was a junior officer with the 2^nd Battalion Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders. Educated at Winchester College and at Oxford, he went to the Western Front in February 1915, by which time his younger brother Thomas Gillespie had already been killed in the fierce fighting of the previous year. Like many other public school boys of the time, Douglas (as he was known) kept in touch with his school and wrote, in June 1915, to his headmaster at Winchester¹. In his letter, he reflected on the fighting that continued to rage over the area where his brother had been killed, and on the likelihood that his sibling must therefore lie in an unmarked grave. He went on to anticipate the war’s end, and outlined his own vision for commemoration, and for pilgrimage, in some detail :

« I would make a fine broad road in the No Man’s Land between the lines, with paths for pilgrims on foot, and plant trees for shade, and fruit trees, so that the soil should not be altogether