ABOUT US/CONTACT US

BIRD BATTLEFIELD TOURS was founded by two brothers, Antony and Nicholas Bird, in 1995. Both were educated at Winchester College. Antony studied sociology at Exeter University, has an MPhil from University College, London and became a town planner and later a book publisher. Nicholas read art history at Sussex University, joined the auctioneers Christie's and subsequently the Victoria and Albert Museum where he became the publisher, winning several major awards. Both became interested in military history and battlefields while staying with French families in the mid-60s, and learning about the effects of war and occupation from their hosts. Their father is a much-decorated veteran of Alamein and the Western Desert. Nicholas is a member of the Royal United Services Institute, the Guild of Battlefield Guides and has been elected to Council of the Society for Army Historical Research.  He reviews for, among other journals, International Affairs, the Chatham House journal.   Antony and Nicholas Bird co-edited Eyewitness to War [Summersdale, Chichester, 2007, £9.99] - an anthology of 'the finest writing about war by those who were there' - which has a Foreword by Major General Patrick Cordingley DSO.  It is avaialble in paperback, entitled Voices from the Front Line [£8.99 - discounts online].  The anthology has been favourably reviewed, one perceptive reviewer calling it 'brilliant'.

Antony Bird has written the definitive book on the Battle of Le Cateau [26 Aug. 1914], which has been published [2008] by Crowood Press [www.crowoodpress.co.uk] at £19.95.  The book is entitled GENTLEMEN, WE WILL STAND AND FIGHT: LE CATEAU 1914.

Nicky Bird
19 Hale Gardens
London W3 9SG
Tel/Fax: 020 8752 0956
e-mail:nick@nickybirddesign.com
info@birdbattlefieldtours.com

Tony Bird
1a Franklin Place
Chichester
W.Sussex
PO19 1BL
Tel: 01243 789077
Fax: 01243 773348
e-mail:antonybirdpublications@hotmail.com
info@birdbattlefieldtours.com

GOING TO THE PAST

Nicky Bird looks at battlefield tours then and now; how guides can help counter myths - and avoid own goals. 

Bird Battlefield Tours take small groups to major battlefield sites in Europe and elsewhere, in a convivial atmosphere where we guides, brother Tony and I, encourage the sharing of knowledge and opinions over a good dinner. A fellow guide recently described the good guide as - 'raconteur, humorist, sage, analyst, clairvoyant, manager, driver/navigator, nursemaid, doctor, diplomat and all-round good-egg.' True, these things come in handy. But slightly more important are - historian, battlefield expert... and knowing when to shut up.

For battlefield tourists there are other things to fear apart from having guides lecture you to death. I met a man once who was still shell-shocked from a dreadful experience he had suffered years before. A distinguished tour guide wanted his guests to 'feel' the reality of trench experience, specifically of attacking at dawn. So he woke them at 4 a.m. in their modest Arras hotel, fed them some sweet tea and rum, drove them to the preserved trenches at Beaumont Hamel, and at 5.10 a.m. handed them heavy packs, blew a whistle and told them to charge over the parapet and across no-man's land. I think he might have thrown things at them to simulate shrapnel. Anyway, this was too much reality for my friend who buggered off to bed when he got back, to get some shuteye and recover from the rum and sweet tea. Rest assured we won't get you up at 5.10 a.m. I am not at my best then.

Battlefield touring is hugely popular which is both good and bad. It shows an awareness of the past, and past sacrifices, which must be good. But there are drawbacks. I first heard the Last Post sounded at the Menin Gate at Ypres forty-five years ago. I was alone, apart from the buglers and a local drunk sheltering from the rain. This year there were about 300 spectators each time I attended, mostly rather bolshy schoolchildren Twittering away, and treating the whole thing as a theme park. To cater for and attract new and perhaps less committed visitors 'Visitor Centres' have been built with sometimes unhappy results. At Tyne Cot Cemetery, near Passchendaele, you are forced to walk past voice recordings of a little girl calling out the names of the dead in the cemetery. If it is meant to be moving it is not, it is puerile. These places - and some museums tell you how to feel. A good guide can steer you clear of preachy museums or pointless private exhibitions of rusting wire and helmets. And they should counter entrenched prejudices, fostered by images of callous chateau generals. Soldiers actually spent far more time training, in support, in reserve or on leave than being shot at in the front line. They had concert parties, enough to eat (often for the first time in their lives), drank themselves silly in estaminets, and enjoyed mademoiselles. I met an old soldier in Ypres forty years ago who told me that the war years were his best. And that, interestingly, the natural order of things for him and his mates upon being relieved after front line duty was - 'wash, eat, sleep, drink, make love, find an Australian to fight...' Perhaps these priorities say something about the human condition. My own priorities omit the Australian.

War is not all hell. Christmas '44 - an xmas pud to remind Tommy of home; Normandy '44 - French cricket; and a drop of cidre, perhaps free, perhaps not, Norman farmers were canny

American Civil War: cards and dominoes

'War is hell', Sherman wrote. But it is not the complete picture. War is also thrilling, boring and ridiculous. For every Sassoon or Owen traumatised by his ordeal, there is a Capt. Greenwell, of the Ox and Bucks Light Infantry, who wrote home during the First Battle of the Somme: 'It is an extraordinary sort of battle and I wouldn't have missed it for anything. I think we shall soon enter upon another violent phase. I hope so...' He wanted
to beat the enemy, a far more common sentiment among the men than the pacifist ambivalence of war poets. Bomb school he found 'ripping' fun, and in the depths of the wretched winter of 1915, Greenwell confided: 'My mind is deeply engaged with a grand dinner party I am giving...' Capt. Sidney Rogerson of the West Yorks thought the Great War 'the happiest period' of his life, despite terror and discomfort, because 'though it may have let loose the worst it also brought out the finest qualities in men.'

As battlefield guides we bring trench maps and important things like a corkscrew. And one should never be without a compass. I was standing on top of Vimy Ridge on a foggy day, pointing to the slope up which the heroic Canadians had struggled, when someone asked why the heroic Canadians had attacked from the German side. The bugger was right, I had got the Canadians attacking their own men, a compass would have helped. Sometimes you can bluff your way out of these mishaps but this wasn't one of them.

German soldiers in the Great War, playing cards rather seriously

French officers near the front, 1915, maintaining standards

French soldiers on leave, 1916/17