ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the ‘ongoingness’ of the First World War, in the sense that it still lives through the people and places on the former Western Front. It takes as its case study the activities on 11 November 2018 in the small village of Pozières, on the Somme, France, to illustrate some of the processes through which the war as a re-formed event is ongoing, as a result of dedicated actors working on the battlefields. The chapter shows how the First World War is itself an extended ‘event’, controlled and maintained through ‘performative uptake’ in formal ceremonies and also reflected in the continuous mobility of local people, tourists, families and state officials across the battlefields.
