This chapter is a little unusual in a book about the psychology of war. One purpose of the book is to try and understand something about how humans behave in response to war, with a special focus on exploring the role of socio-cultural factors and memory. People's understanding of war – if they are lucky enough not to have genuinely experienced it – is largely derived from books, television and films. The aim of this chapter is to take a more active approach than just reading, but one where the danger has passed – to walk around the battlefields themselves, in the footsteps of the soldiers. In this way, one can improve one's understanding of war, and try to understand something more of what people go through when they fight. This is addressing the van der Kolk statement: ‘the body keeps the score’. War trauma is about bodily experience as much as emotional or cognitive factors, so walking the battlefields adds something to one's understanding. The chapter does not provide the detail for specific tours, but instead gives some guidance on how to organise a tour, and on how what you put in to such a tour can enhance what you get out of it.

The chapter uses a single example: to Ypres, for Passchendaele. I make no excuses for choosing this site. It has been described many times before and is familiar to many people interested in war.