Abstract
Leaving their fallen comrades behind in a foreign field was an added loss for veterans of the British, Canadian and Australian expeditionary forces. Mourning and the desires for memorialization among civilians on the Home Front have been well researched. Less well known, however, are the expressions of grief among the soldiers themselves. Documents, later accounts and soldier memorials and cemeteries make one common element stand out—the sacredness of the battlefield itself. For some veterans the bond between the dead and the living remained strong despite physical distance, while for others distance offered a way to leave the tragedy of sacrifice behind. The memorial at St. Julien to the Canadian dead of the Second Battle of Ypres, known colloquially as The Brooding Soldier, is a telling case study of the veterans’ representation of their sacrifices.
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Silk, N. (2019). “Some Corner of a Foreign Field That Is Forever England”: The Western Front as the British Soldiers’ Sacred Land. In: Beyerchen, A., Sencer, E. (eds) Expeditionary Forces in the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25030-0_11
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