Verdun

Our last stop in France is a rather solemn memorial outside of the town of Verdun.  Verdun was the scene of what some call the most terrible battle in human history.  When Germany launched its attack on the fortified city of Verdun in February 1916, the French were essentially taken by surprise, having just moved a huge amount of armaments and men away from Verdun to support other fronts in the war.  The Germans bombarded the town and its surrounding fortifications with a non-stop barrage of artillery fire, terrorizing the residents and soldiers alike.  The sound of the artillery carried through the ground and could be heard and felt over 100 km away.  The French rushed troops and armaments back to Verdun, and both sides settled in for a bloody war that saw almost even casualties – 400 000 French, 400 000 Germans.  In only 10 months.  This was industrial war on a new and unprecedented scale – 40 million heavy artillery shells fired, poison gas attacks, hand grenades, and trench-clearing flame throwers were the order of the day.  Men on either side of the conflict sent to Verdun knew they had little chance of returning…  After the war, 9 rural French villages lay in ruins, never to be resettled, hundreds of thousands of corpses littered the former fields and forests, which now were more of a lunar landscape, bearing no life at all.  As corpses and body parts were finally hauled away, one of the workers commented that the ground underneath his feet seemed to contain more bone fragments and human remains than actual dirt or vegetation. 

For the men who could not be identified, a huge ossuary was built to house the bones  - the remains of 150 000 unidentified men fill the basement of the ossuary.   A museum was also built, later, so that the memory of what happened here would not be lost to future generations – a warning, perhaps.

Stern officer of the First World War

One of the hundreds of thousands of injured in Verdun

The devastation of modern warfare

The earth of Verdun after the battle

One of the heavy artillery guns that rained down more than 40 million shells in the area.  The ossuary is in the background.

A beautiful day for a picnic

Some of the identified remains of French soldiers

The rebuilt church in the destroyed village of Fleury

Wandering the cratered remains of Fleury.  Markers show where the school was, the boulangerie, the fromagerie, many family homes.. all gone forever.  In 1916, there would have been no trees, no grass, just mud, artillery shells, and human remains.

Back on the bus, on to Germany!