The Path of Peace: Walking the Western Front Way

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Anthony Sheldon [00:02:52] So it was the idea of a soldier called Douglas Gillespie and he was in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and he went across to fight and he found himself in trenches very close to where his brother had been killed in the first winter of war in 1914. And in early 1915 he wrote to his parents with an idea and expanded it still further in a letter to his headmaster and said, Look, if I survive, I would like to see created to as a reminder of of where war leads - to death, including the death of his brother , I'd like to see created a tree shaded pathway a 'via sacra' he called it all the way from Switzerland through the Voges to the English Channel, along which I'd like every man and woman in Western Europe to walk as a reminder that war leads to death and destruction. And so that letter was found by my co-author in a book called 'Public Schools and the Great War' by David Walsh. He'd been pointed to it by the archivist at Winchester College, where this young man went to school. And I, I just knew at once when David showed it to me that this was an idea that needed to be realised. It didn't need to be lying dormant as just a musty letter in an archive - it could inspire a whole vision. And that was the beginning. So the idea begins and ends with one soldier, Douglas Gillespie, who alone of the millions of soldiers, apparently in the millions of soldiers who fought in that war, had this vision of a walkway along the line of the No Man's Land. And so then a group of people, including Tom Heap, who is just about the closest surviving relative male relative to Douglas Gillespie, Tom Heap, who is regularly on screen with BBC One's Countryfile programme - he became very interested in his family. His mother and Rory Forsyth became very interested and he is now the chief executive along with Kim Hayes, a group of people built up and they have made all the running. They are the heroes. And because it is now absolutely happening, it's totally happening. It's a walking and cycling route. It's already marked out in the most northerly areas and it will become as big in time as the Camino through southern France and northern Spain as the pilgrims pass. It's a wonderful and remarkable path with a mission to help everyone walking it discover peace - as he intended.

Are there other places or contexts where ‘walking for peace’ has been suggested – or could be beneficial? 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? 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. The book comprises many themes: there is the walk itself, the war, the unknown warriors in need of a champion, the charity too needing a champion, and the author’s own thirst for a drink and medical attention for his blisters. And swirling through this mix is the grief which Seldon feels after the loss of his wife.Every Prime Minister I’ve written about has said they will regret they didn’t have more time to reflect. And, for me, the heart of reflection is faith.” In 2012, however, he was deeply inspired by a letter a young but soon-to-be-killed officer called Alexander Douglas Gillespie had sent his parents from the western front. This described his dream of creating a commemorative path after the war, along no man’s land all the way from Switzerland to the Channel. After that, he wrote, he hoped 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”. Second World War commander Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery later wrote that Monash was “the best general on the Western Front in Europe”.

The route stretches 1,000 kilometres from Switzerland to the Channel Coast. The idea 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 after the war. Then, as during the Covid pandemic, relatives could not see loved ones close-up, so the older children waved a final goodbye to their parents in London Hospital from a safe distance. Philip and Masha died on 16 and 21 July , 1918, and are buried in Edmonton Jewish Cemetery. They date from the 1960s, when, together with the Central Council of Jews and the Rabbi Conference, the German Volksbund erected memorials to recognise the Jewish soldiers who died for the Kaiser. The markers read: “May his soul be woven into the circle of the living.” How, I asked myself, could such sacrifice be repaid with such horror just a generation later? The idea was initially proposed in 1915 by a New College Old Member while serving in WWI. 2nd Lieutenant Alexander Douglas Gillespie of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders wrote a letter home from the front line to tell of his vision of ‘a via sacra’ (a sacred road), a route for peace between the lines; My books have mostly been about recent British history, including biographies of the six Prime Ministers after Margaret Thatcher. So deciding to write a book on this walk was a fresh departure, a chance to delve into the history of those who died and also that of my own family.He wanted to know more about Gillespie, and soon discovered that his niece, great-nephews, and great-nieces were alive and were just as enthusiastic about the vision. The BBC Countryfile presenter Tom Heap is a great-nephew, which gave the project a boost. Supporters emerged, and the Western Front Way charity was formed. For me, reading this book in January 2023 revived memories of the research by the OSP History Group between 2014 and 2019 into the men of Old Saint Paul’s who fell in World War One. So it was with considerable interest that I followed Anthony Seldon as he pursued his own pilgrimage. There are many parts of the Western Front to which our soldiers did not go: I have learned about other battlefields, other towns and villages and buildings destroyed by war. Some restored, some left as memorials to many fallen men.