A Guide’s Guide to Guiding: Training with Commonwealth War Graves

Cole Green is one of our amazing Commonwealth War Graves Foundations Guides currently in France and Belgium. Here, Cole guides us through what it’s like to train as a Guide.

A Guide’s Guide to Guiding: Training with Cole

Image: CWGF Guide Cole Green

Sitting quietly watching over the Ypres Salient on a ridge near Passchendaele, Tyne Cot Cemetery is monumental in both its size and grandeur. 

It is here that my colleagues and I are privileged to call work for two months as Commonwealth War Graves Guides before we move to Thiepval Memorial to the Missing to guide there. 

Week one is our training week. This week, we have been whisked around the Ypres Salient by our Commonwealth War Graves trainers visiting, interpreting and analysing a range of Commission cemeteries. 

Aside from educating us about the history of Commonwealth War Graves, this first week will give us the confidence to guide visitors through these sites. 

Our job will be to guide our visitors away from viewing them as relics of the past and towards understanding them as conservation projects for the future.

The first blog in this series charts the training we experienced to become CWGC guides and the lessons we learned at each cemetery we visited. 

Image: Cole guiding visitors around Tyne Cot Cemetery, the largest Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in the world

Although there are recurring features in our cemeteries, each cemetery represents a unique contemplative patch of the Western Front. 

The first lesson we learn as guides is that there is never an ‘always’ with these cemeteries but always an exception. In other words, memory and heritage are complicated disciplines and these cemeteries are no different.

Stop 1 - Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery

Image: Just some of the thousands of war graves at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery

After surviving the channel crossing, Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, which lies to the southwest of Poperinge, West Flanders, Belgium is the first cemetery we visit. 

It's dusk when we arrive and quiet aside from the cars hurtling past on the nearby main road. Birds are singing and the cemetery possesses a stillness that simultaneously intertwines a feeling of beauty and horror.

Before we’ve even left the car park, our trainers begin to teach us the importance of a cemetery’s context. As Guides, we must not treat our cemeteries like islands - they are not isolated from Flanders but rather a part of the fabric. 

Our trainers ask us how Lijssenthoek’s surroundings such as the terrain, the main road, the car park, and the design features of the visitor centre might influence the visitor’s experience. We notice that Lijssenthoek sits near (what appears to be) a pub, a farmhouse, two (very) busy roads, and flat Belgium terrain. 

After our trainers inform us that the nearby farmhouse was in fact the medical facility that gave birth to Lijssenthoek, we see the importance of understanding a cemetery’s surroundings to provide clues about its origin.

As we approach Lijssenthoek, we are taught a second lesson about guiding - always enter a CWGC cemetery through the main entrance. 

We think this sounds obvious but, as if on cue, a school coach abruptly pulls up beside us and the kids cascade into Lijssenthoek through the side gate. 

The many main entrances of the Commission's cemeteries are carefully designed greetings to visitors, tourists, and, in the immediate years after the war, the bereaved. 

Therefore, the entrance is crucial to understanding the impression, tone, and atmosphere that the architect wanted to create. 

For the cemeteries to speak for themselves, it is our job to encourage visitors to enter via the main entrance rather than climbing over the cemetery wall.

Stop 2 - La Belle Alliance

Image: Contrasting with Lijssenthoek, La Belle Alliance Cemetery is a much smaller affair

Lijssenthoek is a large cemetery, but we particularly notice its largeness even more when we visit our second cemetery. 

With just sixty burials, La Belle Alliance Cemetery - which sits in the middle of a field just north of Ypres - creates a very different experience for us Guides. 

This session is focused less on the visitor experience and more on collectively and individually close reading the gravestones. As we walk around the cemetery for the first time, we identify interesting features like recurring cap badges on the graves and similar dates of death. 

We are also drawn to the cemetery’s incoherent layout.  Unlike Lijssenthoek, which is concentrated and organised, La Belle is a small cluster of scattered graves. 

Here, we are introduced to new types of burials such as comrade burials, trench burials and collective burials. Rather than reading the graves as separate to the cemetery, we are being taught to understand them as intertwined. If the graves are the words, then the cemetery is the book.

As a smaller cemetery that is both isolated from the rest of Flanders whilst being slap-bang in the middle of it, La Belle encourages you to carefully spend time with each individual grave. You appreciate the individual human sacrifices more. 

This cemetery has an intimacy, but it is not claustrophobic - the open surrounding fields create a feeling of freedom amongst the graves. 

Whilst smaller Commonwealth War Graves cemeteries don’t represent the seismic numerical scale of the war, they do highlight how the war was won by mates, comrades and friends, like the ones that now lie at La Belle Alliance. 

Stop 3 - New Irish Farm Cemetery

Image: A special memorial at New Irish Farm Cemetery

After a quick drive from La Belle, we’re at cemetery number 3: New Irish Farm. 

It is a hot and muggy day, but the white graves still stand in a proper and organised manner as if defying the weather.  

Here, we explore some distinctive features of the Commonwealth War Graves cemeteries that we are all beginning to recognise: the iconic Stone of Remembrance and the Cross of Sacrifice. 

The positioning of the Stone and the Cross in our cemeteries, we are told, is always significant because they reveal how the architect wanted us to navigate the cemetery and where he wanted moments of contemplation to take place. 

Inscribed with Kipling’s words ‘Their Name Liveth For Evermore,’ the Stone of Remembrance epitomises the commissions’ dedication to names of the fallen. 

‘Our job is names, not graves’ says one of our trainers, which really sticks with me. 

Next, we are directed us to the cemetery’s back brick wall.

Although it seems unusual to venture to the back wall, we’re told that if there are ever any graves that rest against a brick wall at a Commonwealth War Graves cemetery, there is usually something interesting happening. 

Lying against the brick wall are several graves and a large stone called a Dulhallow Block. The block indicates that these graves are special memorials. 

At the top of each grave, an inscription tells us that the fallen soldier it commemorates is buried somewhere in New Irish Farm but not necessarily directly below the grave. 

In other words, the Commonwealth War Graves knows that the casualty is here, but not specifically where. 

Later, we see other graves with similar inscriptions at the top of the headstone to indicate ambiguity behind a fallen soldier’s whereabouts. 

Image: Memorial to Sergeant H.F Williams DCM 'Known to be buried in this cemetery'

These inscriptions read ‘Known to be buried in this cemetery’ or ‘Believed to be buried near this spot.’ 

These graves highlight two things to me. One is the importance of language at our cemeteries.

To commemorate a soldier properly, it is fundamental to use the correct wording. A soldier ‘believed’ to be buried has a more ambiguous posthumous legacy than one ‘known’ to be buried. 

I’ve also noticed that the Commission always uses the word ‘fallen’ rather than ‘casualty’ or ‘deceased’ to describe the individuals we commemorate. 

The second thing I learn at New Irish Farm is how imperfect, complicated and uncertain the process of locating and identifying the dead was in the 1920s and continues to be to this day. 

The more graves I see and the more cemeteries I visit, the more I realise that a certain, clear identification of a soldier’s remains is much more uncommon than I thought. 

Afterall, Commonwealth War Graves had to provide clear, concise memorials to those who fell in such a messy and confusing conflict.

Stop 4 - Tyne Cot Cemetery and Memorial

Image: A bird's eye view of Tyne Cot Cemetery, show its enormous scale

Many cemetery visits later, we finally arrive at Tyne Cot. 

Tyne Cot culminates everything that the Commonwealth War Graves stands for today in 2024 and what it stood for at its grand opening in 1927. 

Both the missing and the found are present at Tyne Cot, as are 38 nationalities, deceased from each year of the war, beautiful architecture and remnants of a battlefield from 1917. 

With a team of gardeners tending to the horticulture daily, Tyne Cot is the ultimate presentation and preservation of memory. 

If one stands inside Tyne Cot, one can look through the main entrance and, like a window, see the endless rolling Flanders fields full of farmhouses, tractors moving slowly through the heat, and cyclists gliding along the lanes like a flock of birds. In the distance, the Ypres Cloth Hall penetrates a deep blue sky. 

When one pictures the First World War in present-day West Flanders, you feel both amongst the remains of the past and an outsider merely looking across empty Belgian fields. It is this feeling of being so close to such monumental history that makes you squint your eyes and see if you can still see the men on the Western Front to this day. 

Thought-provoking reflections aside, we are here to learn how to guide. In today’s session, we are each given a case study of a buried Tyne-cot individual with a short anecdote about this soldier. 

The objective of this exercise is to extract the key information about the individual and present these anecdotes to our peers as if we are giving our own tour.

Harry and Ronald Moorhouse

Image: Father and son Harry and Ronald Moorhouse (copyright unknown)

My individuals are Harry and Ronald Moorhouse - a father and son who both fought on the Western Front and tragically died within thirty minutes of each other. 

Today, they are commemorated on panel 108 on the memorial to the missing at Tyne Cot. 

Once I have located their names, I scan through the text that describes their tragedy and I consider how I can convey their story to my audience in a way that both captivates them and emphasises the heartbreak of their situation. 

For example, I identify which words I will add weight and meaning to, and I also decide to open my presentation by posing a question to the audience. ‘Do you notice anything unusual about this panel?’ - I will ask this question and then wait for my peers to notice that there are two casualties on the memorial with the same surname. 

Asking questions seems to be an effective way of engaging the audience with the historical context. To create the greatest impact, I also decide not to reveal until the end of the story that the Moorhouses were infact father and son. 

I deliver my anecdote, and my presentation appears to have gone down well with my guides. My only criticism is that I need to re-adjust where I’m standing so that I don’t block any names or make any noise whilst shuffling on the gravel. 

I’m learning that positioning yourself as a tour guide is crucial to communicating a story. Having an open posture with eye contact and hand movements can create a more natural and engaging relationship between tour guide and tour group. 

Personally, I have been so fixated on studying the history in preparation for this job, but it is the smaller skills like body language that I now need to consider. 

This is my first time interpreting and communicating a casualty’s story at Tyne Cot. It feels strange, almost disrespectful, to ‘rehearse’ the Moorhouse’s story, add any theatricality to their tragedy, or even use words like ‘audience’ in a cemetery context. 

Yet, to communicate these stories to the public, you cannot treat them like old and dusty historical relics. You must make them open, comprehensible, and engaging. 

Training week over. It’s now time to begin guiding ourselves at Tyne Cot. 

Want to support the Commonwealth War Graves Foundation Guides Programme? Donate Today

The Commonwealth War Graves Foundation Guides Programme gives young history lovers an opportunity to work for Commonwealth War Graves in France and Belgium.

They welcome visitors, share the incredible stories of those commemorated by Commonwealth War Graves, and help assist our guests on their journey of remembrance at important sites like Thiepval in Northern France and Tyne Cot, Belgium.

We’re passionate about preserving the memories of the Commonwealth’s war dead and interacting with young people to keep their stories alive. Our Guides help us in our core mission while becoming equipped with real-life skills to aid their personal development.

Our Guides Programme relies on your generosity. 

£100 could pay to fully train one of our Guides ready for their experience of working abroad so they are best able to welcome visitors, share the incredible stories of those we commemorate, and help assist visitors on their journey of remembrance.

Please donate to the Commonwealth War Graves Foundation today to keep projects like this going.