The Path of Peace: Walking the Western Front Way

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A journey of self-discovery and a pilgrimage of peace… A remarkable book by a remarkable man.’ Michael Morpurgo You might also enjoy ‘ Sierra Leone Peace and Cultural Monument‘, ‘ Padre Steve’s Christmas Journey of Healing‘, ‘ Peace Through Movement‘ and ‘ Care for Nature‘. Congratulations to The Western Front Way on the placement of their plaques on each of the first 10 steps of the route (and some more besides!)

The world has not achieved the peace that those young men of 1914 believed they were fighting for; we saw a second world war start only 20 years after the first ended; now, in 2023, we must hope that we are not on the brink of a third. As our Rector said in his sermon on Remembrance Day, 13 November 2022, “There are no answers to the persistence of human destructiveness. But there are ways of responding”. Douglas Gillespie’s response, his vision of a Way of Peace, is surely more relevant and necessary than ever. A deeply informed meditation on the First World War, an exploration of walking's healing power, a formidable physical achievement... and above all a moving enactment of a modern pilgrimage.' Rory StewartThere is much to admire in this account of his journey. Seldon gives us vivid descriptions of his aches and pains, blisters, moments of despondency and emergency visits to French hospitals, while making clear that they were as nothing compared with what the soldiers once went through. He has a historian’s enthusiasm and sharp eye for spotting and recounting good stories, many from the particular battlefields he is passing by. It is impossible not to be moved by a chaplain’s description of the last moments of a 19-year-old who had been court-martialled and sentenced to be shot: “I held his arm tight to reassure him and then he turned his blindfolded face to mine and said in a voice which wrung my heart, ‘Kiss me, sir, kiss me’, and with my kiss on his lips, and ‘God has you in his keeping’ whispered in his ear, he passed on into the Great Unseen.” Robert Graves, meanwhile, recalled an officer yelling at the men in his trench that they were “bloody cowards”, only for his sergeant to tell him: “Not cowards, sir. Willing enough. But they are all f-ing dead.” The book also includes some interesting wider reflections on Great War brothels, dentistry, dysentery, footwear, homosexuality and unexploded munitions – and whether “first-hand experience of war make[s] for better and wiser [political] leaders”.

Sir Anthony Seldon will be talking about his book at the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature in February. Seldon was enacting an old idea. Douglas Gillespie, the younger of two brothers killed in the war, had wrote to his parents that after the war there should be a path where No Man’s Land had been, ‘with paths for pilgrims on foot, and plant trees for shade, and fruit trees, so the soil should not be altogether waste. Then I would like to send every man and child in Western Europe on pilgrimage along that Via Sacra, so that they might think and learn what war means from the silent witnesses on either side’ (p.5). It was a striking and visionary idea and it captivated Seldon when he read the letter. The route of his 1,000 kilometre journey was inspired by a young British soldier of the First World War, Alexander Douglas Gillespie, who dreamed of creating a 'Via Sacra' that the men, women and children of Europe could walk to honour the fallen. Tragically, Gillespie was killed in action, his vision forgotten for a hundred years, until a chance discovery in the archive of one of England's oldest schools galvanised Anthony into seeing the Via Sacra permanently established. He has a historian’s enthusiasm and sharp eye for spotting good stories, many from the battlefields he is passing by Tracing the historic route of the Western Front, he traversed some of Europe's most beautiful and evocative scenery, from the Vosges, Argonne and Champagne to the haunting trenches of Arras, the Somme and Ypres. Along the way, he wrestled heat exhaustion, dog bites and blisters as well as a deeper search for inner peace and renewed purpose. Touching on grief, loss and the legacy of war, The Path of Peace is the extraordinary story of Anthony's epic walk, an unforgettable act of remembrance and a triumphant rediscovery of what matters most in life.

Do you believe, as Seldon argues, that from ‘drops in the ocean’ like Gillespie’s Path of Peace, great rivers and seas can flow? What makes you optimistic about this? What makes you pessimistic? Tom Thorpe [00:06:13] Which brings me to my next question. Why did you want to walk the way and why did you want to write a book about it? The original idea for the walk came from a young British soldier, Douglas Gillespie, a notion which laid buried for 100 years until I came across it some years ago. His younger brother died very close to where he was fighting, and feelings of grief and perhaps guilt troubled him. Too young for the orphanage, he was fostered by one Jewish couple after another, until eventually adopted by Marks and Eva Slobodian, Russian émigrés who may or may not have known his parents. Out of an estimated Anglo-Jewish community of around 250,000, about 50,000 Jews enlisted. Many fought with the Jewish Brigade in Mandate Palestine. But others fought and died on the Western Front.