Pilgrimage to the Western Front

In the years after the First World War, thousands of men who had fought on the battlefields were drawn back to the Western Front. For the former soldier, these journeys of remembrance offered a chance to pay homage to their past and to see what peace looked like in those places where they had only known war.

Pilgrimage to the Western Front gathers together the first-hand accounts of veterans as they retrace their wartime footsteps and stand again at the scenes where they lived through one of history’s bloodiest conflicts. The fascinating reports reveal what they found on their return and their reflections and memories of places still healing from the devastation of the war years. Discover their emotions and what greeted the battle-scarred men as they revisited old haunts, met former friends and foe, and confronted their past.

Illustrated with a remarkable archive of images of the destruction of post-war France and Belgium, many drawn from the collection of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, this volume features fifty personal stories spanning each of the interwar years. Join those who ventured back to the Western Front, and who witnessed a world recovering from one great conflict edging towards another.