"Not on my watch!" War remembrance tourism fights for life

POPERINGE, Belgium (AP) — Simon Louagie dreaded losing Talbot House, a World War I soldiers’ club that has become an institution in remembrance tourism on the Western Front where soldiers from all corners of the globe fought amid untold carnage just over a century ago.

For months last year, a COVID-19 lockdown closed the club which had always been an open house. Once it was for Commonwealth soldiers who fleetingly shed the fear of battle in Flanders fields that was within earshot. For generations since, people found history, solace, wisdom and an understanding at Talbot House about why the motto of this region in western Belgium is “Never into war again.”

Since the end of World War I in 1918, millions of visitors — from as far away as the United States New Zealand, and South Africa — have flocked to memorials in northern France and Belgium to pay tribute to the fallen.

Now, closing in on two years of the coronavirus pandemic and travel restrictions, the tourist industry welcoming them is crippled. Lockdowns and travel restrictions, of which many remain in place, are keeping foreign visitors away.

Another Armistice Day beckons on Nov. 11 and the outlook remains bleak.

Talbot House manager Louagie remembers that when funds were running low and doors were closed, only one thought ran through his head: “Not on my watch.” From as many as 500 guests a day, he sometimes found himself alone.

The house, he said, "needs noise. It needs piano music. It needs visitors, schoolchildren, people playing chess. Cups of tea, rattling in the kitchen to make it come alive. I need to hear the kettle whistle,” he said.

“We cannot disappoint all those generations before us by letting it close down,” he said. The thought has echoed around the region where hundreds of thousands lost their...