Students from the UK and from Germany are acting as tour guides together at one of the most famous war memorials in the world. “We don’t think of them as the enemy.”
Three British and two German students are currently acting as tour guides at the Tyne Cot First World War cemetery in Zonnebeke. They do the tours in pairs – always with one British and one German guide.
The German students’ summer jobs at the famous memorial site are part of the Erasmus programme, while the British students’ jobs were arranged by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Tyne Cot is the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world. Beautifully maintained, it is home to nearly 12,000 graves and 35,000 names of missing persons.
The German students can also offer the tours of Tyne Cot in German. “That’s a really nice part of it,” says Roel Timperman of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. “We want to ensure that they know we don’t think of them as the enemy. We are all working towards a common future, and that this story is also extremely relevant to them.”
Student Malin Müller of Dortmund notes that they are “the descendants of the enemy” and so it is “really symbolic that we can work together with the British youth here.”
The students are guiding tours as well as working in the associated visitor centre and at the Menin Gate in Ypres.