"preservation of battle sites" Topic

Yesterday, I decided to visit the site of the battle of Doornkop, where – just on the edge of Johannesburg – the Jameson Raid came to an inglorious end in January 1896.
Despite the complete lack of signs we eventually found the place. Alas, the battleground has since been swallowed up by parts of Soweto (of which I am sure everyone has heard) and is surrounded by a shanty town and some very dodgy looking characters. A brickworks was built virtually on top of the memorial and the whole area is littered with rubbish, discarded beer bottles and the like.
Luckily, I had brought my Ridgeback along with me, and he warded off any unwanted attention, but it was very sad to see the lack of respect / interest in history. I have noticed this before in South Africa – the graves and monuments around Ladysmith and Colenso are similarly overgrown and surrounded by rubbish, with nothing there to inform any visitors.
Of course, in South Africa these days, everything is political, but is the situation the same in other nations? I know we cannot preserve each and every battlefield, and that 'progress' will always march on – but surely monuments and grave sites should be respected? I also think that South Africa is missing out on a potential tourist market by their lack of interest in their colonial history.

Any thoughts?

I went to visit the Market Garden Battlefields with a freind from a the US a couple of years ago.

Obviously it is hard to preserve an area this size, but in some of the more important spots I would have wished for less development.
What was sad was the almost complete lack of markers and signs in the area. At times it was impossible to get your bearings. It was kind of strange to see this kind of ignorance towards recent history.

On the other hand there was someone who took and interest. The old guy passing my car (German number plates) while I was waiting infront of the tourist information in Eindhoven who muttered something about Nazis and spit on my car was really heartwarming!

Cheers,

Burkhard

It is not unique at all.

Its not even political, in the way you probably intend. Even the most nationalistic /patriotic sites are often ignored or forgotten.

Scotland has lost Stirling Bridge (genuine Scottish Army)
- but kept Culloden (bunch of scruffy rebels).

Greece built a swimming pool on top of Marathon !

A lot of these sites are on ground worth fighting over – Austerltz is still prime ground for 21st century radar.

Mostly though, its just financial. its not often you can expect a return on investment that Gettysberg generates.

A real case study is Waterloo.

On the one hand it does generate revenue but that money is used elsewhere or enters private hands.

A good example is Hougoumont. As long as the original owner was still living there it was a working farm. As soon as it was sold off it began to fall apart. It took incensed British visitors to set up a fund to save the farm from disappearing altogether as has happened with landmark buildings at Ligny and Quatre Bras.

The one thing that stopped Braine L'alleud from swallowing up the battlefield is the highway they built right next to it.

Waterloo isn't part of Belgian, Flemish or Walloon history, so it doesn't pay off politically speaking. At best it is ignored, at worst it is tolerated.

"It is not unique at all.

Its not even political, in the way you probably intend. Even the most nationalistic /patriotic sites are often ignored or forgotten."

However, The Battlefields Trust in the UK is trying to do something about it.
battlefieldstrust.com
- and has been since 1993.

In particular, the Naseby Project ( naseby.com ) is planning to build a state-of-the-art visitor centre.

A place is only worth what people are willing to pay for it to be preserved. Battlefields canno tall be preserved and why should they ? Decent homes instead of a shanty town would look good on any south african battlefield. As with the Waterloo example, even if a site is preserved it is not set in aspic as it was the day the battle was fought.

Here, we have many of our ACW battlefields have been turned into National Parks, but that still hasn't stopped stupid idiots that vandalize the place.

Gettysburg is crawling with "Ghost Hunters", and some of these folks are some of the most destructive people I've ever seen. To be honest, most of the "groups" that sneak out onto the battlefield at night, or wander around the areas, are only missing a funky van and a big talking dog..

But our biggest issue with many of these battlefields here doesn't come from neglect, but from too much interest from the "developer", case in point, the recent Wal-Mart Wilderness Battlefield issue.

With the majority of Civil War Eastern Theater Battlefields clusters between Richmond and DC, you can see the threat very easily…

*Fredricksburg at Maryes Heights…you look down the street of a subdivision to see where the yanks came from.

*Richmond Kentucky got saved last year by a major grassroots effort to stop a town councilman who had been a staunch preservationist from "suddenly turning a 180", and wanting to rezone some property (that he owned),next to the battlefield into a commercial development.

Washington DC has been growing like a cancer for over 40 years and many of the historic sites in surrounding areas are coming under the eyes of cash strapped town councils who are being offered a nice chunk o' money in return for "this little piece of land", so that they can build another Happy Burger or Condo development on…

And it does get worse…I've just showed you the tip of it….

plasticviking2

Why should they?

Because the history of any nation is important and should not be forgotten. Extending your argument, do you also maintain that the Brits should bulldoze the Tower of London and Stonehenge to make way for council houses?
I understand the financial practicalities of keeping battlefields preserved if no one is paying to see them, but if they are allowed to decay and be built on, then certainly no one ever will.
I am surprised that anyone – especially in this hobby – would think that the preservation of history is in no way important.

The fact is any historical site can make money with tourism. But It requires educating people about the History
that is around them. People just need to be informed.

Bulldog, there is no history per se in a battlefield. Older battlefields have less than none once all detailed knowledge of what went on has been lost. its possible to keep a chunk or set up a memorial but otherwise they have no intrinsic value. Can you imagine what Europe would look like if all battlefields were preserved ? Most are undeveloped anyway so it is usually just a case of arguing to save key locations 'threatened' by development.
'the preservation of history is in no way important '..
(did i write that ?
History is only available through the lens of the age one lives in. Decent housing is more important than any amount of nostalgia. History will not be forgotten, just reinterpreted, as it always is. The cemeteries in Flanders are now more significant than the battlefields, for example.
I also find that wargaming is quite capable of ignoring or reshaping history to suit gamers needs, they are not quite the champions they might seem to be. I like visiting a good battlefield as much as the next person. I even find it fun to see where such and such happened is now a car-park.
Make shops not war. Peace, man.

Swings and roundabouts-

the Newbury bypass dug up swathes of the ECW battlefields, but definitely makes it easier to get to Colours ;-)

Patrick has hit the nail on the head, the problem in Europe is that so many battlefields are currently in countries whose national identity has nothing to do with the battle. Ergo, they don't care.

Cases in point, Austerlitz means nothing to the Czechs, Waterloo means relatively little to the Belgians (or to the extent it does, it's a Fleming vs. Walloon question), Eylau means little to the Poles, etc.

I suspect the Belgians only play up Bastogne for the American tourist angle.

"The old guy passing my car (German number plates) while I was waiting infront of the tourist information in Eindhoven who muttered something about Nazis and spit on my car was really heartwarming!"

So true; I asked at Amsterdam train station for a ticket, in English, and the clerk answered in English and was polite. I said I wanted to go to Germany, his face froze up, and he reverted to Dutch. I only realized afterwards it was because he then thought I was German.

In the UK there is a lot of pressure on land – it's not like (say) Canada – 2nd largest country in the world with a population of 30 million (only slightly more than the population of Greater London). And even in canada a lot of the battlefields are built on/vastly altered.

For the UK – take sites like St Albans – WOTR battles fought in the streets of the medieval town, and not surprisingly it's changed a lot (the central streets preserve the older city to a good extent, but the surrounding fields and approach roads are very very different).

The wilder/less developed parts of the UK which could be more easily preserved (say Dartmoor) are also where the battles weren't fought (because they are wilder and less developed !).

"Bulldog, there is no history per se in a battlefield. Older battlefields have less than none once all detailed knowledge of what went on has been lost. its possible to keep a chunk or set up a memorial but otherwise they have no intrinsic value."

Then you have obviously never walked a battlefield with members of the public. When someone who understands the battle explains what happened in relation to the actual ground, then suddenly historical events come alive and they get a new sense of the history and its importance to them.

Battlefields are part of our heritage. If we allow them to be destroyed or built on then part of our heritage will be lost forever to future generations.

The Americans have done a better job than most of preserving many civil war battlefields. People do, however, have to have a life. We have a lot of space in north america, and not much history. If they had started preserving battlefields when the roman empire got started, the whole place would have to be built on stilts by now.

We are fortunate to have bits of places like Vimy and the Somme.

"If they had started preserving battlefields when the roman empire got started, the whole place would have to be built on stilts by now."

We have battlefields in the UK from the Roman period on up. The biggest problem with ancient battlefields is that we often do not know exactly where the battles took place. This is true at least as far as Bosworth (1485, where there at least 3 possible sites!).

Even assuming we did have a precise location for every battlefields, they represent only a tiny fraction of the available land area, so no need for stilts, even in these heavily populated islands!!

Unfortunately the majority of the population aren't as interested in battlefields as we are!

I visted Waterloo last year and Hougoument was in a state of considerable disrepair but was all fenced off with the builders due in soon! The Panorama building was also surrounded by scaffolding as inside there were signs on the painting of leaks and damp. At least they seem to be trying to maintain it's attraction to visitors.

hussarbob1746.webs.com

As a War of 1812 reinactor in canada ,i report with great sadness the state of one such site .The battle of the Longwoods near London ,Ontario has a commemorative cairn set upon the bluffs overlooking the meandering Thames River.At such location the Royal Scots assaulted crest top positions ,dug in American regulars in the middle of winter .It was quite a heroic but disastrous debacle ,they never had a chance to gain the crest.Today the area where the bulk of the casualties would have lain is a dumping ground for privvies ,50 gal drums and all the refuse along highway 3.Forshame!

Mike Snorbens – all the way to Naseby. When the A14 was being built, someone mentioned it above, there was a campaign to 'save' the battlefield.

Work done by metal detectorists and Glenn Foard (Northants County Archaeologist IIRC), however, established that the main sites of the action were all north of the road. Hey Ho!

I'm not sure how much we gain from 'seeing' the battlefields today anyway. Didn't the ridge at Waterloo have several feet shaved off the top to make the monument or make it easier to get up the road or something?

how much do we gain from seeing battlefields?

You should go to Galipoli at Dawn on an Anzac day ceremony to see the answer to that.

Or walk the trenches.

Some battlefields matter more than others.

Sadly, most are not built over for houses though, but for utter crap like radar stations, swimming pools, roads and shopping centres.

Low cost quality housing I can accept. but it isn't where the threat comes from.

That's remembrance though. Do we gain anything much from seeing the field?

I've been to Austerlitz, an example amongst several others, and stood by the Peace Cairn (erected in 1914, ironically) you can 'see' the battle and why some things happened they way they did. And why it's a prime site for radar incidentally! I was there spending a few nights with a friend in Blazovice/Blaschkowitz but, conversely, you get no sense of the fighting for the village at all.

Several postings noted that many battlefields are now occupied by countries or peoples who have no real purchase in that battle; I'd never thought about it that way. I have given battlefield preservation a bit of thought over the years, though.

People have to live. They buy stuff and work in stores. They live in houses. They work in offices. They drive on roads. They fly in planes, ride on trains, and they build military facilities to ensure their current and future security. They use cell towers for their phones, power plants for their energy, and dig/strip mines and such for resources. Modern agriculture uses machinery and irrigation and giant consolidated "farms" to create the huge amount of food necessary for modern populations and economies. All of these activities require land, and they're not making any more of it.

I'm an amateur military historian. I've enjoyed walking military battlefields. But I am also a modern citizen and recognize that preserving battlefields against such forces as I've described is probably not realistic. The whole of Virginia is a civil war battlefield. Tens of thousands died in and between trenches in the Somme in WWI. Every inch of Western Europe is a WWII battlefield. To argue to preserve it in its WWII stage of development is ridiculous.

In Manassas, Virginia, there was a big to-do over a commercial project to site a big-box Walmart on part of the battlefield. The "battlefield" is already built over with roads, houses, farms, stores, gas stations, and other development that occured since 1865. It bears no resemblence to the scattered farms and woods of the great ACW battles of Manassas. To keep Walmart away (large stores are unpopular with some) is the goal of most of the activists. The historical preservationists seem to me a minority of those interested in "preserving" this battlefield.

The Gettysburg National Park is a beautiful place to visit, but the beautifully wooded hills bear little resemblence to the area that greeted the combatants of July, 1863. The hills prior to the battle had been denuded of trees (the wood used for some industry or other). An interesting tour, but not a "preserved" battlefield.

The value of these places are in the memories, not the geography. A suitable site for a memorial or a museum dedicated to the history? Yes! A shrine to be frozen despite the economic and societal needs of people and their children? No. A more sensible use of energy would be to photograph and model those places now, and to publish as much as possible in electronic form so that the world can have the information preserved.

"The value of these places are in the memories, not the geography. "

Sorry, but I TOTALLY disagree. The geography defines WHERE the battle took place, often WHY it happened there and not somewhere else and HOW it happened the way it did. Good historical interpretation of the landscape, including all the changes since the battle until now add immeasurably to our understanding.

"Preserving" it in model or electronic form, while valid if accurate, is as prone to error and misinterpretation as any other form of recording. The ground itself is there for all to see. Battlefield archaeology is a discipline in its infancy (take a look at the Towton excavations as an example link ). Destroy the battlefields now and that archaeological heritage has gone for ever.

Jimborex makes some excellent points and I fully agree that there is no point 'preserving' something which no longer looks like it used to, but I also agree with Mike. I specifically went to Dornkop to see the geography and to walk the battlefield. No book or model or wargame can match the feeling of being there and walking about, looking at the slope angles, the areas of dead ground and what can be seen from where. The piles of empty beer cans, used condoms and shanty huts rather took away from the experience, though. Jimborex is absolutely correct that we cannot possibly preserve everything, and at least his suggestion that just a small part of the battlefield be left as a site for a monument is a step in the right direction.

When I was in Vietnam recently, I walked the field of Long Tan – which has not be built on, or intruded by squatters – and was impressed with how respectful the local guides were. The Vietnamese government also realise that people (mainly Aussies) want to visit these places and therefore bring money into their country.

While the situation in SE England or Holland is no doubt different, the idea that South Africa faces a stark choice between perserving battlefields or providing low cost housing is nonsense. South Africa is a huge country, with a population of about 40 million. I would hazard a guess that battlefields take up less than 1/100 of 1% of our surface area. If the government had the brains to turn these battlefields into things people might actually want to visit, they might even raise some tax to pay for this housing (which would be built a few hundred yards away) and the attraction might even provide jobs for those who live in the new houses.

I agree that financial practicalities mean not every battlefield can be preserved, but I would have thought that the world's more remarkable battlefields deserve a lot more attention than they currently get.

I read the article Mike linked us to about the Towton excavation. I'm not sure the conclusions drawn from the site are showing any groundbreaking information. The conclusion is that these bodies in a mass grave from a medieval battle suffered mostly head and facial injuries from medieval weapons. One supposition is that the men were wearing armor, which accounts for the fewer torso injuries. Okay, I'll concede I wouldn't have guessed mostly face and head injuries. I like that new information as a wargamer; not sure of its value as a historian.

I'll retreat a bit from my pro-development/anti-preservationist rant in response to Mike's point about battlefield excavations. I hadn't considered the improvement in such archeological science and its implications for future excavation and discovery. Good point, Mike.

Most of my original argument, though, I'll stick to, but will amend it to "the land is for the living and the not yet born, but when practical, I'd like to see battlefields preserved."

On an added note, the shame of Bulldog's experience at Dornkop, and the sensibility of the preservation he observed at Long Tan, show the difference in perhaps approaches of different societies to their resources and history.

Jim

"On the other hand there was someone who took and interest. The old guy passing my car (German number plates) while I was waiting infront of the tourist information in Eindhoven who muttered something about Nazis and spit on my car was really heartwarming"!

I submit it could have been much worse – at least he didn't use a Schmeisser…..

On Spain the sites are completely ignored and urbanistic predacy has eaten and is still eating much of them. The politics do not care anything about what they consider "grandpa tales".

Just an example: last year with a couple of friends we were visiting the Battle of Guadalajara sites (Spanish civil war). At the main town of the battle, Brihuega, we asked for one of the main locations at the touristic infrmation office, the girls attending did not knew anything of a battle there. The history briefings of the town and region we got at that office did not mention it. A shame.

it's not like (say) Canada – 2nd largest country in the world with a population of 30 million (only slightly more than the population of Greater London).

Cobblers. The UK has a population of 60 million, are you seriously suggesting that half live in Greater London?

Anyway, apart from archaeology (which is important of itself), what does a battlefield offer anyone? Apart from a vicarious thrill and a half arsed 'understanding' of history.

I suggest that by walking a battlefield, one gets a lot more than a "half arsed 'understanding' of history". I have found my preconceptions challenged on several occasions upon visiting battlefields.
Visiting a momument which has been encroached by a squatter camp or is covered in graffiti and strewn with beer cans also does not show any respect for the fallen, which I find distasteful.
I am unaware of ever experiencing a 'vicarious thrill' on visiting any site of military rememberance.

Can we say those who don't learn from their history are doomed to repeat it?

Next year in Virginia the Sesquecentennial of the American Civil War. 2011 big doings in Manassas VA (About 5 miles from me as the crow flies). The preservation group I belong too is still anxiously seeking to preserve endangered sites from disappearing and the estimate is in 20 years all sites will be developed or inaccessible, so the crusade goes on.
Remarkable strides in preservation have been made for everyone's enlightenment and enjoyment of history right where it occured.

When I was stationed in Germany I found a great deal had been preserved. Perhaps not full battlefeilds, but bits and peices of big events for that area. For instance, in one small town they still have a small stone structure with a little bronze plaque on it. Our guide explaned that in the 30 years war, the town had been overran by another somewhat larger toewn about 20 Ks away. The little stand was where the Cathiolics had built the fire they used to heat the Irons to put out the Protestants eyes.

Not a famous incident, or even that rare in the war, but a big thing to the local populace.

I also met a man that ran a gasthaus I drank at a lot that still had the sword, pistol and one uniform of his however many great grandfather who was in Napoleons Dragoons.

If by walking a battlefield one gets a sense of history ,then my child the job is done bulldog ,the next generation of vidiots will never have the same reverence or understanding.Our wars of relevance are eroded by the new images. The truth is the property values of the twin towers
area dictated a rebuild.Any memorial there will be tongue in cheek an admittance of a huge loss ,swished aside to guarentee commerce.The dead seem to only valuable in short term.Capitalism ,everything commodified.Bill this is philosophical ,not political.
Too many wargraves are under highways and factories.