ABSTRACT
Whatever subsidiary reasons they have for travelling, pilgrims have one purpose: to visit a particular grave or memorial. Many are widows and other close family members of the one killed. Many people, however, travel simply as tourists – out of curiosity, because they want to try something different, to keep a spouse company, or because they chance across a war cemetery en route to elsewhere. One history teacher who arranges school trips to Flanders and Northern France suggested that battlefield visits are about creating order out of chaos. Battlefield pilgrimages have six characteristics that place them closer to traditional religious pilgrimage than to modern tourism. Traditional religious pilgrimage and modern battlefield pilgrimage are different from all Cohen's tourist experiences in that the pilgrim's centre out there is well connected to core values of his home society, a point Cohen himself makes about pilgrimage.
