The Memory War of the Western Front
A cultural landscape reflects the interaction between humans and the environment (UNESCO). It is a natural area that has been affected by mankind, either through physical creation or destruction, and now possesses an intangible meaning from that exchange (UNESCO). The Funerary and Memorial Sites of the First World War, perhaps better known as the Western Front, is currently on UNESCO’s World Heritage List as a cultural site, but truly it should be classified as a cultural landscape.
Inscribed in 2023 for its unique and globally impactful part in human history, as well as for the thoughtful architectural works inspired by the terrible events, these 139 funerary and memorial sites show the extent of the individual soldier’s interaction with the trench and its surrounding areas during the Great War (UNESCO). This listed portion of the Western Front spans parts of Belgium and much of France, where some of the most famous and bloody battles of the war were fought (UNESCO). It was never a continuous line, but rather a collection of near and far battlefields (National WWI Museum).
UNESCO and the creators of these monuments, parks, and cemeteries, choose to use this deeply scarred part of the land as a way to remember the fallen on all sides of the conflict, promote peace, and represent the cost — both human and natural — of war (UNESCO). In the design of all these dedications, there is a deeply felt desire to make memorials that are worthy of the sacrifices that they are commemorating (UNESCO). There are a variety of dedications; while most are for military servicemen, there are also a fair amount for those who are still missing in action, as well as civilians who were killed (UNESCO).
World War I was a global conflict that lasted from 1914–1918, involved twenty-eight countries, and took the lives of around 14 million people (Gilder Lehrman Institute). It saw the introduction of aerial and tank warfare and the weaponization of poisonous gases (Gilder Lehrman Institute). The Great War led to the disintegration of four major empires — German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian — as well as the emergence of the United States of America as a world power (Gilder Lehrman Institute). It prompted the Bolshevik Revolution and colonial revolts in the Middle East and Southeast Asia (Gilder Lehrman Institute). It led to the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the collapse of European colonialism (Gilder Lehrman Institute). This was an engagement that reshaped the balance of power in the world, in ways that we are still feeling the effects of today.
The Western Front, possibly the best-known theater of fighting from the First World War due to the award-winning classic novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, was a trench system that is estimated to have been between 600–700 kilometers long, spanning from the English Channel to the Swiss-French border (National Army Museum). It was the location of several well-known and severely costly battles, such as the Somme (Taylor, 2018). Battles often lasted for months rather than days, as had been the norm in previous wars, which caused the soldiers of the Western Front to be locked in a gruesome stalemate, with offensives that usually failed and took many lives (National Army Museum). This was because of the style of fighting unique to the Western Front: trench warfare.
Trenches were places where soldiers anxiously waited for the next engagement, caught snatches of sleep if they could, struggled through the constant mud and exposure to the elements, and tried to hide from enemy fire (National WWI Museum). They were deep gouges in the ground, often not wide enough for two men to pass each other without knocking shoulders; the walls and ineffective floors were constructed with sandbags, wood, and barbed wire (National WWI Museum). The dismal conditions were only temporarily escaped when the soldiers were ordered to attempt a crossing of No-Man’s Land: the area between their trench and the enemy’s that, already flat from the natural terrain, had lost all life and been completely leveled due to artillery bombardments (National WWI Museum). Trees were destroyed, with only the rare bit of stump barely sticking up from the ground (National WWI Museum). Grass, flowers, and crops had been reduced to a muddy muck (National WWI Museum). Most animals had fled — aside from the rats, which thrived with the dense delivery of corpses into the decomposing environment (National WWI Museum).
Before the war broke out, the land that the Western Front occupied was carefully worked by farmers, healthy forests, or large fields of wildflowers (Taylor, 2018). The rife devastation to the natural environment during the conflict was extreme, and to this day, there are areas that remain closed to the public because they are toxic from the dispersal of weaponized poisonous gas and dangerous due to undetonated ordnance stuck in the ground (Taylor, 2018). Once the fighting was finally finished, though, the land began to gradually recover (Taylor, 2018). Grass and flowers regrew (Taylor, 2018). Trees were replanted (Taylor, 2018). Animals came back to graze and to live (Taylor, 2018). However, the resilience of nature has not yet been able to overcome the battle scars from the four years of intense, destructive fighting.
While some of the Western Front has been returned to farming, for the most part the land is now a living, unbiased testament to the brutality of warfare (Taylor, 2018). The physical damage can still be plainly seen in shell craters, trenches, and ruins of buildings, forts, and fences (Taylor, 2018). Many battlefields have been preserved — either turned into national parks or memorial sites (Taylor, 2018). Though no efforts are made to keep up the appearance of the trenches, allowing the grisly remains to erode away as nature and time pleases, the overall deformations to the land continue to exist (Taylor, 2018). Former farmland that was fought on has been converted into war cemeteries (Taylor, 2018). These grave sites are still active, as archeologists are still uncovering the bodies of soldiers (UNESCO). All these locations are part of UNESCO’s Western Front, the renamed Funerary and Memorial Sites of the First World War. All these locations are evidence of a cultural landscape: the story of nature and warring men — they shaped each other.
The flat conditions of these parts of Belgium and France forced the Great War soldiers who fought there to dig trenches. They had no other options for cover; whatever they built atop the land would be destroyed by artillery and machine gun fire, so they had no place to go but down, into the protection of the earth. Thus, if it were not for the essence of the natural environment, trench warfare would not have been invented. This led to the creation of No-Man’s Land, which had even deeper affects on the environment. Though most areas have regrown their grasses, regained trees, and had wildlife return, they still bear the physical scars of the painful intangible connection that all of humankind now has to this once-idyllic stretch of land.
The Funerary and Memorial Sites of the First World War should be classified as a cultural landscape in order to properly address the deeply rooted interaction between humans and the environment during this tumultuous period of time. Trenches would not have been dug if not for the natural conditions of the land, and the environment would not have sustained the damage nor bear the same mars that it does today if not for the war on the Western Front. The land and the people were forever changed by their brutal exchange. It remains a place of remembrance: to encourage the protection of peace, to honor those who died, and to warn about the heavy costs of war — human and natural.
