There is a village named Douaumont just outside the city of
Verdun. If you look there you'll see it's still listed on the map. Douaumont still has a mayor and town council. But as you get to the sign saying you're in Douaumont you may not the red diagonal line drawn across the name. For Douaumont is not there any more. There are signs marking where a house stood and what the family did who lived there. There are pictures of what the town looked like in 1915. But nothing stands there now. Along with eight other villages it was wiped from the earth in February 1916, in the opening days of the great
Battle of Verdun.
I cannot begin to talk about my trip to Verdun without discussing the great battle that lasted for a year there, a battle that took 300,000 soldiers lives, and wounded half a million more. In late 1915 a great stalemate reigned over the battlefields of the Western front. Once the Race to the Sea had been completed along with the slaughter in Flanders fields the German military commander, General Erich Von Falkenhayn chose to stand on the defensive in the West. His reasoning was sound, Germany was fighting on two fronts with Russia and Turkey allied against them in the East. His armies occupied Belgian and French soil, while German lands remained free of the fighting. The fighting at Flanders had already shown that under the military conditions of that time the defense was far more powerful then the offense. By standing on the defense in the West he could free up soldiers to fight in the East, where the areas involved were greater and Russian political and military weakness made the prospects for victory brighter. Let the French and British bleed themselves white trying to drive German soldiers from France.
In late 1915 he changed his mind. No one is entirely sure why, perhaps it was political pressure, or simply the weight of his on conscience after such a brutal struggle, but he resolved to go on the offensive and he chose Verdun as the place Germany would attack. He intended to seize territory so emotionally important to France that the French would fight like madmen to get it back. He hoped France would bleed its army white trying to drive out the Germans and become amenable to a negotiated settlement. Verdun was critical to Frances economy but also to its ego as France still stung from the loss of Alsace-Lorraine during the Franco-Prussian War. It was known that the common French soldier, the poilou, was angry to the point of rebellion by then. French commander Joffre had tried multiple offensives and lost tens of thousands of soldiers without result. The French soldiers were proud, but thought their commanders idiots and with reason. The reason so much valor proved in vain are complex, but simply put barbed wire, machine guns and quick-firing artillery were more then men could hope to march against armed only with bravery and a bayonet. Still, they knew there were dying and were willing provided it was for a reason. By 1916 they could see little reason.
Second, the demands of offensives further west had led the French to strip the defenses around Verdun. Fort Douaumont's defenders numbered under 500, while it was designed to house several thousand at need. The land was studded with forts built during the 19th century, and though combat had proven many inadequate in 1870 many, including Douaumont, had been upgraded using the lessons of that war. It was a quiet sector, troops were needed elsewhere and they had the forts, which included guns in armored turrets that could be lowered beneath the earth. Nearby Lorraine was under German control and heavily forested, which made possible the construction of the logistics support needed for a large army in a place where such preparations might not be easily discovered. In short, von Falkenhayn chose to bet the farm in Verdun. On February 16, 1916 the Germans attacked, firing over 2 million artillery shells in their initial, preparatory barrage. German soldiers attacked using infiltration tactics and moving barrage. They were able to seize Fort Douaumont, and so a year long struggle that claimed began. The Germans kept their troops in the whole time, while France rotated her entire army in and out. But when they loaded their trucks the poilou knew they were headed for Verdun. When the battle ended in November 1916, 300,000 lives had been lost, half a million men had been wounded, and the battle lines were pretty much where they were a year earlier. The French had not been bled white, but remained determined as ever.
If you are French, the name Verdun means something to you. The day I was there a platoon of French soldiers was visiting the site as a unit learning about their history and a little bit more about the realities of war.
My visit began at the Verdun Ossuary. The Ossuary was constructed from 1925-27 as the many thousands of dead were being moved from temporary to more permanent graves. Understand this, while artillery has improved over the years in many important ways World War I was the first war fought with cannon and mortars modern soldiers would see as direct cousins of the weapons we use today. It was an artillery war. The largely fixed front lines made concentration of even very heavy artillery pieces practical. Guns such as the German "Big Bertha" and the French 14" railway guns hurled projectiles very similar in weight and power to the 'flying volkswagens' hurled by the more modern battleship USS New Jersey. Mortars with mouths 40cm wide were used. Artillery was fired and used every day of the year, turning the landscape into a moonscape of craters and ridges. No trees stood then upon the battlefield at Verdun. Mud, soft mud that hadn't packed down after being hurled a thirty meters into the air was the rule. You had to put boards on the ground if you didn't want to sink in. The earth was barren and brown, scored with trenches and lined with barbed wire.
Why do you think they called the space between the trenches "no man's land"?
The simple fact is that when a large artillery shell goes off next to a human being made only of flesh, blood and bone, not much remains. When comrades are left on the battlefield for a long time they rot, and many were not quickly recovered when recovering your dead might get you shot! Entire units might be wiped out, and it became impossible to identify many of the dead. The bodies of 130,000 unknown soldiers had been recovered after the fighting. More are still being recovered. The Verdun Ossuary was built to house their bones.
I don't know how to describe the architecture, it corresponds to no style I recognize. The building is shaped like a short T, about 80 meters long and ten wide and carved out of solid gray rock. A tall, rounded central tower stands over the main entrance at the center and there is a chapel dedicated to the Catholic soldiers of the France, England, Germany, the colonies and the United States sticking out the back, though I suspect its use is more ecumenical today. An eternal flame burns at each end of the main section, and each of the large light brown blocks inside is marked with the name of at least one fallen soldier. There are windows dedicated to each of the provinces and colonies of France, with what look like two small sarcophogi in each arch. There is a small museum and gift shop, and you can climb to the top of the tower which houses a large bell and from whose windows the entire battlefield is visible. The most interesting part of the gift shop and museum are the three-D pictures taken during that war, of the trenches, the denuded countryside, of tanks rolling and exploded, of soldiers relaxing in life and death, some hideously burned or mutilated by combat. I watched a short, moving film on the battle in the theater an then went out to see the real point of it all.
For the bones of the dead lie intermingled beneath the ossuary. And you can see them there, thigh bones bleached white and stacked up, there a trio of skulls, a partial jawbone, the bits and pieces of what were men visible through the windows. French, German, American, Christian or Muslim, it does not matter, they rest together there beneath the Ossuary. It is a sight that chilled me to the bone, and reminded me again why Europeans rush less swiftly to war then we Americans. They have paid a far deeper price.
Were that not enough a cemetery for the identified dead stands in front of the Ossuary, one that dwarfs the American Cemetery in Luxembourg. I don't know how many lie there. Tens of thousands, I'm sure. And I saw another large cemetery inside Verdun. The idiotic chicken-hawks who called the French "surrender monkeys" have never been to Verdun.
From there we drove a short distance to Fort Douaumont named after the now destroyed village that once stood there. It was built before 1870 then restored using concrete and the lessons of the Franco-Prussian war. It has rotating armored turrets housing guns up to 155mm in caliber and dozens of armored casemates. It had it's own power plant, maintenance shops, bakery and chapels, and at its peak the Fort housed 3,000 men. Once its stone walls stood in clean lines, the earth-over-concrete roofs smooth. Much of the masonry is battered and broken, the surface represents the more cratered sections of the moon. But the armor and concrete bits still stand, the view-ports out there, even if the armored metal is pitted and scored from hits.
Did I go underground? Absolutely! The tunnel roofs are six feet thick of masonry and concrete with even more dirt above. They drip water and small stalagmites hung from the ceiling with small round knobs on the walkway below forming from the dripping. I was able to examine the mechanism of the 155mm turret, and the machine geek in me was quite fascinated. Two counterweights made it possible to raise and lower the turret below the earth if you had three strong men to crank. The tunnels go deep, very deep but we were only permitted into the top levels, which were housing primarily and had the one of the fort's entrances. I never got deep into the deep, counter-scarped trenches that divided Douaumont from the surrounding country. I did stand on the roof, and it's rough as the country surrounding it. But I really only scratched the surface.
The Germans took Fort Douaumont fairly early into the battle and the French recapture of it in October marks the end of the battle. It's quite a place. From there we drove down to the Trench of Bayonets, now covered in Masonry, left as it was with the graves of still more unknowns resting under the roof, marked only by wooden crosses. It seems so peaceful now and wooded, if you ignore the overgrown shell craters, and bits of broken masonry walls.
From there we made a quick stop at the England Trench, still preserved and extending into the woods between the Ossuary and Fort Duoaumont. On one side the trench runs into a pine forest, very peaceful if you once again, ignore the omnipresent shell-cratering. It is really quite lovely, only I know none of those trees stood there back then, for artillery would have knocked everything down. The Trench winds through the hills.
As time was pressing we stopped at the destroyed village of Fleury. It's now something of a preserve, with lots of trees growing atop the craters and a small white chapel at the base. I got one picture here before my memory card maxed out. Once again the battlefield is now peaceful and beautiful, rather then nude, muddy and strewn with bodies. Or buildings.
And thus ended my visit to Verdun. Kevin had to head back to pick up his children and I had a lot to think about. In America we have Gettysburg, Antietam, Vicksburg, and Fredericksburg. They were tremendous battles upon which a new republic stood. But their combined death totals does not match the unknown dead whose bones rest beneath the Verdun Ossuary. More people died at Verdun that in any American war, and more died there in all our wars combined if you do not count the American Civil War. More men died at Verdun then during the Civil War. America's combined losses in all wars does not equal the French or German losses in World War I. We should think on that before we open our mouths and call others to sacrifice.
According to Albert Herring the red stripe through a town is in fact normal for leaving a town. I did see signs leading to the town without being "x-ed out" and he's spent more time then Europe then I, so he's right. But I hadn't noticed that anywhere else (I plan to look now) and it seemed so appropriate I committed this narrative to begin with that image.