The Path of Peace
Dear all,
On Sunday representatives of our cadet force and broader school community took our usual place in the Brentwood Remembrance parade, and on Monday we marked Remembrance Day with a Chapel service during which we gave thanks to all those – from our school and beyond – who have fought and, in many cases, laid down their lives in the service of our country.
It has also been Geography Enrichment Week in school and our reading in Monday’s assembly combined History and Geography through the vision of a man named Alexander Douglas Gillespie, who was born in Scotland on 13th June 1889. He joined Winchester College in 1903, where he excelled during his time at school before going to Oxford University, graduating in 1912. He was training to be a barrister when the First World War broke out two years later but immediately joined the call to arms by obtaining a commission in the 2nd Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
Arriving on the Western Front in February 1915, the sector in which his Battalion found itself was temporarily quiet and he used the time to write many letters home. On 14th June 1915 he wrote a letter to the Headmaster of Winchester College with a vision of what might be done with the Western Front after the War. Gillespie’s idea was for a Via Sacra – a Sacred Way – that could be created as a means of showing future generations the sacrifices made by those who fought so that peace could be restored to Europe. He envisaged a road in No Man’s Land between the trenches, all the way from Switzerland to the Belgian coast, with some of the ruined farms and houses left as evidence, and records from different regiments left where they had served. His vision was that every man, woman and child in Western Europe should be sent on a pilgrimage along the Via Sacra
‘so that they might think and learn what war means from the silent witnesses on either side.’
Sadly, Gillespie was killed later that same year on the first day of the Battle of Loos in September 1915. His body was never found and his name is remembered on one of the Memorials to the Missing on the Western Front.
Back at Winchester College, his former Housemaster used the idea of a Via Sacra to create a war memorial cloister in school, and the letter was picked up in the national media. 100 years or so later, his idea for a ‘Via Sacra’ has been realised in recent years with the creation of the Western Front Way, a long-distance walking and cycling route from Switzerland through France and Belgium to the Channel Coast. In 2021, Sir Anthony Seldon, former Headmaster and political biographer, set out to walk the whole length of the Western Front from Switzerland to the Belgian coast. It was a remarkable pilgrimage in honour of Alexander Douglas Gillespie’s vision, and Seldon’s journey – both physical and spiritual – was recorded in a book entitled The Path of Peace, and at a time when we remember the millions of people who have sacrificed their lives so that we may have the freedoms we enjoy today, it’s one I can highly recommend.
Have a great weekend
Best wishes
Michael Bond
